She slept soundly after her birth. The cubs suckled away and slept themselves, and it was only hours later one of them made a sound. Upon rousing she moved to cater to the blob of flesh and tiny tufts of fur, licking it so that it would release its bladder. When it did she withdrew and did a headcount, rolling the numbers off in her head...
One... two... and as her eyes fell upon the now dried third cub, she paused. The runt of the litter suckled away with reckless abandon as she stared...
The thing looked like a fox in color. The furs could be attributed to her mate, and perhaps would darken, but the little thing was brighter than when he had been sopping wet with saliva and other fluids.
Sitamat roused and grappled for a teat, and the little red
Pingasut was caught in the crossfire. Tonravik nosed
Pingasut away from where he latched onto, ready to see how her runt would react to this opposing force. She preferred none of them, but that
Pingasut looked so like a fox caused the odds to be against him from the start.
His placement in the womb had been by chance; further away from the blood flow, he had received less nourishment than his surviving siblings, and thus had been born considerably smaller than them. He was not destined to catch them in size, either. But he had not been forsaken in his development. He was small, but he had been gifted the strength of instinct and spirit, promising to rise to the challenges that inevitably faced the litter's runt. Mere hours after his birth, his mother would present the first one.
He suckled, filling his belly. He was jostled by his brother and then his mother's nose intervened to dislodge him entirely. His reaction was not explosive. He did not squeal nor immediately scrabble away in search of his former place. It was though he took a moment to think about the situation, as he turned his head slowly in one direction and the next. His mind was, of course, too primitive to think much, and it was his aforementioned instinct that gradually lent movement to his legs.
He crawled, pulling himself with his front paws. He tried to wedge himself between two warm bodies but had not the strength to shove them apart. Not to be deterred, he found he could crawl over them, and when he slid off of them he found a teat poking him in the snout. He turned into it and re-attached, to resume his feed.
The alpha female watched him. He bumbled his tiny body over his brothers to arrive to where he needed to be, and the mother watched as he found the source of food. He was brighter than even his father... truly, a doppelganger of a fox at this point in time. Tonravik did not favor it; as her mother had behaved toward her in her youth due to her being a female, Tonravik would likely treat Pingasut. Her dislike toward the species was reason enough. Still, she would do her job and be a mother to him; but she wondered at his chance for a future, already. Mate. Children. Were he to look like a fox, would he have any success in those fronts? What sort of wolf would want a future with a fox...? Still, her kit was still a wolf. That alone should increase his odds. If he made it that far. She would ensure he survived his childhood; he would need to do the rest.
Tonravik looked to another cub who had paused in their suckling. Malrok. She ran a smooth tongue over his back roughly and he released whatever was within him. Cleaning it swiftly, she felt him reattach himself to a teat afterward.
She looked at him and saw a lesser canid, a competing predator that was to be killed on sight. Others may look and see a wolf with an beautifully foxy set of features to compliment the red-orange hues of his notably soft fur. He was not destined to wield powerful masculinity the way his father did, and brothers likely would. It was not even far-reaching to say the mold he was poured from was cut for a female. How he would grow and develop had yet to be seen, but one thing was for certain: he had the same fire in his spirit that lay on his coat, and he would learn to use what had been given to him.
He sucked milk into his belly swiftly, and was interrupted when one mouthful came back up, overflowing his jaws and spilling down his chin and throat, soaking him to his chest. He had an instant dislike for this wet sensation. He pug snout pushed into his mother's belly and he squirmed for several moments. But this failed to rid him of his discomfort, and so he whined, compelled by instinct to do so, to hopefully provoke his mother into aiding him.
Her son struggled for a moment, and Tonravik did not humor letting him despite her lack of affection toward this one in particular. The leaders attentions returned to him, and Tonravik's tongue licked at his face while she worked at removing his discomfort. He could not do it for himself yet, but one day he would. Tonravik withdrew once finished, before Sitamat did precisely what the red-one had done, and she aided him as well. The work was tedious, but had already become habit. The mother of four thought nothing of it.
The caress of her tongue and the warmth of her breath around him as she cleaned him felt wonderful to him, and he cooed softly. His tiny tail twitched back and forth, and wiggled with delight. He fell still when she withdrew, feeling content with how his fur felt now; no longer soaked with warm milk though still moist from his mother's care. He sighed, shuffling closer to nestle in his mother's fur while she tended one of his brothers. His muzzle rubbed against her while his paws absently kneaded her.
He stilled when she stopped, and she drew near the cub to sniff. His kneading paws only confirmed that he still lived... the new mother had yet to identify what was normal, what was not. What their habits were she did not yet know, but she would learn that in this stage when they slept they were content, when they ate they were simply hungry, when they whined it was due to needing release or some sort of aid. They never idled; they always were doing something that would aid them in the next hour, or the next day. Even now their bodies worked hard. It was far from interesting to the woman who could not wait for the babes to learn how to only speak when necessary... though she supposed they did just that already, and were needier now than ever. Tonravik supported their reasoning, but still was agitated by the noise. That they were all quiet now appeased her, and she looked approvingly over the bunch—though her eyes skirted over Pingasut, who by appearance alone had more to prove—before laying her head down.
He was content, and though he did not yet sleep, he lay still. His chest rose and fell as he breathed, his paws continuing to work. One breath he drew brought with it a strand of his mother's fur. It tickled the sensitive inner walls of his nose, and he sneezed abruptly. It startled him, and he whined momentarily for he did not know what had happened. His paw swiped over his nose, before he turned and began to pull himself elsewhere, past his siblings and across them as needed, he wormed away.
The sneeze startled the mother, who lifted her head and looked at the offender. Tonravik moved to lick his face as he wormed along, over his brothers, before putting her head back down. The mother was more tired than anything, and knowing her sons could not get far was more than enough reason to give in to the throes of sleep. Her body acted as a cage, walls they were not yet capable of climbing. So she settled as her son continued his blind exploration, knowing he would end up nowhere dangerous.
He paused in his crawl as Tonravik's tongue swooped down to his face. He liked this attention, the touch, and leaned into it. When it stopped, he continued along and found that indeed, her body was a cage in which he was trapped. His narrower snout bumped into her leg. His front paws continued to pull him forward, but he succeeded only in squashing his nose against her further. He sighed, and then scooted along her leg, drawn toward the radiant heat of her lower abdomen. When he bumped into the softer flesh of her belly there, he nuzzled in and fell asleep.