Nova Peak midnight stroll

For @Swift ..!

The similarities made Bazi's stomach turn.

She had not thought of her great uncle for a long time. Like all other memories of childhood, he had been parcelled up and stored to make room for new experiences - unhampered by the past. Forgetting was one of Bazi's greatest strengths, and Swift was compromising that ability.

He looked just like Orwell. The same dark stripe - a family trait that neither Bazi nor her siblings had inherited, but apparently it had hitch-hiked on their DNA only to appear several generations later.

But the similarities were only physical. So far, at least.

It was late, but daylight stretched into the later hours in the summer. Three of her children were asleep, curled up next to their father in the back of the den. She had chosen Swift from among them, curling her body around his and resting her chin on the ground mere centimetres from her son's snoozing face. Even in deep sleep, he looked to be on high alert - as though the merest hint of a sound would rouse him. "Do you want to go outside, Swift?" Bazi whispered, testing this theory.

<3!

Swift was a much lighter sleeper than his siblings, even when he was in his deepest of sleeps. He was aware of his mother curled around him and sensed her breath with a twitch of his nose as she laid her chin on the floor. When she spoke, his ear swivelled to her, and then he lifted his head and gazed upon his mother's face. He loved his mother, and when he was not busy acting like an old man stuck in his stubborn ways, he had no problem showing her. Like now. He scooted forward to lick her nose, his tail wagging. He understood what she had asked, and nodded. The littlest Frostfur had yet to usher a word. He stood, and turned himself toward the den entrance. Let's go, Mom!

Swift needed no more than a split second to go from fast asleep to a state of full alert. Whittier and Pasha would have taken their time to stretch and complain and fight, but not her striped little boy. He shuffled forward to kiss her nose, earning a smile in response. It amazed her how quickly they were growing, and how much they already understood. Swift got to his paws and made for the door, responding to 'outside' with gusto. Bazi got to her feet, shot her husband a look, and stepped over her child into the cooling night air.

It was light enough to distinguish between individual tree trunks. Everything had a blue hue, and the two wolves stood out like glow-in-the-dark cut-outs on a dark ceiling.

Bazi took a few short steps in the direction of the nearby river, looking over her shoulder to see if Swift would follow.

*hatches a plan*

He had been more than ready to see the outside world for some time, and faced it boldly. He was almost always the first out the door when they were allowed, and the last to be dragged back in when it was time to sleep or time to hide from the weather or some other threat. Swift loved it outside, and hence did not hesitate to take Bazi up on her offer. His head was high as he followed her, but she did not go far before she stopped. He stopped too. For the time being, she had his undivided attention and he was not scurrying off to shove his face into a clop of plants or check something else out. He gave her not but half a second before he nudged her leg with his head and barked at her to keep moving. Impatience. He had it.

Swift followed without hesitation. He flourished in new situations, meeting the unknown with enthusiasm. There was not an inch of the den that his nose had not touched, and Bazi was keen to nurture his curiosity under supervision. She moved on when he barked, settling into a normal, adult gait and assuming her son would speed up to follow. This was the real world, and he couldn't be a child forever.

They wound their way down the subtle incline to the Bitcurrent, their footsteps muted by the damp pine needles underfoot. Bazi slowed whenever Swift found something interesting, but never stopped.

The water made a pleasant tinkling sound as it moved through its shallow bed. Next to the river was a log hollow log in the midst of decay. Fungi and moss brightened its dark surface with bright colours, just about discernible in the low light. It was a prize. Bazi turned to look at her son, bright and easily visible against the forest floor. "These are mushrooms. You can't eat them, but you can smell," she told him, tail sweeping against the damp log.

Muahaha...

He kept close to her heels as she lead him, pausing only on occasion to sniff something new, but his mother was attentive and slowed so as not to leave him too far behind. Most times, he would become so distracted by something novel that the rest of the world would cease to exist, but this time he was eager to follow his mother and his attention remained largely on her. They neared the small river and her tail swept across the log that was adorned with things he had not seen before. Fearless, of course, he marched right up to the log to check the things out, and his mother right on que offered an explanation.

He looked to her, wagged his tail, and proceeded to poke one of the mushrooms with his nose. Then he swatted a different one with a paw, which partly mushed between his toes. With a look of disgust he shook his foot, dislodging some of the offending texture. The commotion had stirred a small creature from within the log; a wood hornet that had been busy scouting out a nest, crawled out from a small burrow. It was a long, black and white thing, and it instantly caught Swift's attention. His mouth curled into a devilish smile, his eyes narrowing. He snapped at the beast...

...and immediately regretted it. As his mouth closed on it, its stinger took him in the lip, and he squalled like a cat with its tail caught in the door. Before his mother had a chance to react, he bolted from the log and ran yelping down the stream edge. He came to a blackberry bush not far from where they were, and, as if he had done this a hundred times before, the oft-clumsy Swift deftly moved between the thorns on the branches to snag a few leaves which he mouthed with earnest.

Swift seemed delighted with his new toy. Bazi settled down to watch him investigate, pleased to have been able to offer her son something more stimulating than a few scattered pellets of shit. 

But the joy was short-lived. Before Bazi knew what was happening, something caused Swift to wail like a banshee and shoot off in the direction of the water. His mother stared, perplexed, at the space he had occupied just moments ago. Where Swift's mouth had been, she saw the twitching, partially squashed body of a dying insect. Black, white, and yellow. Bazi could not name it, but she knew 'Warning' when it was spelled out to her.

She shot after her sun at speed, skidding to a halt in front of the thorny bush with her heart hammering in her ears. Swift had made a bee-line for a very particular shrub, whatever it was, and was chewing on something for dear life. No bleating. He wasn't pawing at his own face, or rolling around in pain.

Gently, Bazi seized his tail and dragged him out into the light, squinting to see what damage had been done to his face. If he was going to swell up, it wasn't showing yet. Swift continued to chew, creating a frothy green spittle that gathered in the corners of his mouth. His mother whined uncomfortably, uncertain about what she should do - her son seemed to be possessed, but whatever was directing has actions also seemed to be preventing his pain.

He chewed, and mouthed, and chewed and mouthed some more as his body quivered with adrenaline born of the flight response. He whined a bit. His mother had come to his aid, tugging him from the bush by his tail, but she was not sure what to do with him. Fortunately, he was working it out for himself. Somehow. He all but ignored her as he busied the blackberry leaves in his mouth. A small swelling arose on his lip, but it was no where near the size one might expect, and after a few minutes, by which time the leaves had been mashed into pulp and liquid, he spat them out. He made funny faces as if realizing for the first time that they tasted terrible, and his tongue smacked and made other noises as he made to rid himself of every last bit of leaf. He then pawed at his face to get what his tongue could not.

Then that was it. He sat on his rump, blinking and glancing around as if unsure of what happened. He felt no pain and the small swelling on his lip went unnoticed. Then he looked to his mother. She was out of sorts. He furrowed his brows and walked to her, rubbing his slimming body against her leg and rising on his back paws to bump her chest with his head. What was she upset about?

Swift chewed and chewed and chewed. Bazi watched him, arrested by the peculiarity of the situation. It was as though - somehow - her son knew exactly what he was doing, guided by some bizarre instinct or the hand of a ghost. Eventually, he spat out the masticated leaf, clearing the bitter taste from his mouth with grimaces and swipes of his broadening paws. When he was done, it was as though nothing had happened. Bazi's peculiar son turned his attention back to his mother, sensing her unease and doing his best to soothe her.

The Alpha stared down at her son's fuzzy head, utterly perplexed.

Apart from a slight puffiness, his face was fine. Bazi had herself seen the effects of a bee sting, and this didn't amount to even a fraction of what she had expected to see. Her gaze fell on the green stains around her son's mouth. The leaf. Was it... medicinal, somehow? Bazi cursed her lack of herbal know-how. "How did you know," she whispered, more to herself than to the pup at her feet. Swift, with his quick paws and his dark stripe.

Though the question had been meant more for herself, it had been heard by her attentive son. He did not know. He answered with a confused shifting of his brow and turning of his head. He stared back in the direction of the log and the wasp, and furrowed his brows before glancing to his feet. He remembered the creature of the wood, and the instant pain of its sting. But the few quick moments between that and now were a muddle to him. His tongue touched his lip where he had been struck, but he felt no real pain and turned back to his mother. He bumped her again with his head and his tail beat back and forth as he looked expectantly at Bazi, in a way that said let's go, what are you showing me next?

Swift stared up at her, eager to get on with their night-time adventure. He was a strange little boy, different from his siblings in a way Bazi couldn't quite place. She studied him for a moment before giving in to his silent request - they were both awake, Swift was clearly unperturbed by the bee sting, so why not? Bazi nodded, and cast her eye further afield. If they crossed the Bitcurrent, it wasn't far to the nearest stagnant pond. There were frogs there, and all manner of strange algae. Bazi gave her son a follow me look and stepped into the water at its shallowest point. With a little bit of effort, Swift would be able to cross unaided.

He followed her, his toes touching the edge of the water before he bothered to sniff and scrutinize it. He was already bold, but with his mother wading across it took him less time than ever to decide that he was not afraid of this new thing and he eagerly pursued her. He was not as sure-footed, though, and slipped a few paces in on a slick stone, half drowning himself in the process. The small river was not deep at this point, but it lapped at his belly and he had tumbled in such a way that he had thoroughly soaked his entire self before he righted himself, batting a paw at his nose as some of the water he snuffled and gulped irritated it. But he was okay, if not a bit skeptical now. He narrowed his eyes at the river before he finished crossing with his mother, casting another wrinkled-muzzle look back at it as he stepped onto shore.

Swift followed, unafraid. Bazi's heart leaped into her throat each time he slipped, but she stopped herself from intervening. The river was shallow, and her brave little pup was doing just fine on his own. Sure enough, he emerged on the other side, chilled and damp but very much alive. Bazi offered him a brusque nod by way of praise, and moved on, walking quickly in the direction of the pond she had passed a few days ago. There was no stream, so she guessed that it was fed by some underground source and topped off by rain water. Either way, it was not water that you ingested without paying for it.

The rest of the trip to the pond was quiet as Swift managed to keep himself out of trouble. Soon his ears were met with the croaking of frogs calling out for some booty, and he parted from his mother's side to creep to the pond edge. He peered around, but could not discern that the occasional bumps in the pond were frogs and not just sticks or clumps of mud. He moved a paw, and one frog that had been keeping still in a effort to go unnoticed (which it had) suddenly sprang from the bank and into the water. Startled, Swift backpedaled, but then his muzzle creased as his lips revealed teeth. He growled, his hackles raised, and then stepped to the pond edge and barked at the offending creature. Well, he barked at the pond at least because said creature had burrowed into the muck somewhere. The nerve of that thing.

Bazi watched her son intently. He did not need an invitation to investigate the pool, making a beeline for the edge to bark at the slimy inhabitants. Some ancient memory of frogs stirred in her head, but the details were too scattered to make sense of.

One frog's head rose slowly from the muck, staring in Swift's direction, daring him to step into the muck.

Within a moment or two, the offending creature reared its slick head, rising just above the surface of the pond. Had Swift not been looking in that direction he likely would have missed it, for its reppearrance came with no fanfare and barely a ripple on the water. His barking stopped, and instead he growled lowly as his eyes locked with the ones protruding from the amphibian's face. Bold and brazen, and with no reason not to be, the young Frostfur made a reckless leap at the frog. He missed, for the frog was quick and had foreseen the trouble.

He splashed in the shallow pond without grace, and promptly found himself sinking in the mud that lied beneath the water. Walking was difficult as he tried to trudge back to his mother, and one foreleg sunk so far down that panic gripped him as he tried to pull it free and found that he was met with a lot of resistance. He yipped and jerked forward, which freed his leg but caused him to face plant into the pond. In a blur of mud and water he thrashed and bolted forward, shooting past his mother well onto hard, safe land before he stopped to shake his coat and grumble about the predicament he had found himself in.

His once white legs were now chocolate in color, and mud flecked his coat here and there. He shot the pond - and the frog - a savage glare and then walked ahead. He was done with that.

Bazi followed her son's antics in a bit of a daze. She saw him struggle but did nothing to help until it was too late - Swift got himself out of the predicament without assistance, and moved on without seeking approval from his mother.

Her son moved with purpose. Bazi followed.

"Honey?" she voiced softly. "Where are you going? "

Last post from me! Since we got some new threads now :D

He was done. He had enough. He was heading home. His mother softly called to him, and looked over his shoulder with pursed lips and a look that read, to the den, duh, where do you think I'm going!. Then he turned his muzzle to the front and kept on walking, and did not stop until he reached the den. He went down into the dark hole, and curled up to sleep using his sister for a pillow.