Wolf RPG

The transition from sightlessness to sight was seamless. One day, Saēna could do nothing but wriggle her nose and kick her feet and wobble on shaky baby legs occasionally, and the next she could blink and look about with startlingly blue eyes. Nothing that she saw made any sense to her. She could make out shades of light and dark, but everything was much too hazy, and her brain was incapable of truly comprehending any of it. The result was that she had already forgotten she couldn't see before, and this blurry half-sight was the newest "norm". It had always been this way, right?

Although it was a completely insignificant development as far as Saēna was concerned, it would elicit a strong sigh of relief from the parents. From the moment her eyes opened, Saēna's activity level had suddenly peaked, and now it was all they could do to make the little babe sit still. Where she had previously done nothing but sluggishly lay on the den floor, she was now making use of her noodle-like legs to stand and wobble around. Within days she would master standing, and within days of that would master walking around, but presently it was a comical sight. The young patchy pup would stand, wobble uncertainly and stare around with widened eyes, then lift one leg awkwardly and tumble onto her face. When she did manage to take a step, she often smashed into the dark bodies of one of her cousins. Their fur made them practically invisible on the den floor to her terrible eyes. She could just barely make out Pura, and often flopped onto him as a target, when she wasn't hitting the floor.

After the dozenth time of falling on her face and bumping her nose painfully on the packed earth, the pup began to wriggle in the dirt, whipping her lengthening tail back and forth and staring up at the dark (and therefore practically invisible) ceiling of the den. Her mouth was opened wide in a toothless grin at an extremely gratifying sensation upon her back (scratching an itch), and though she couldn't yet laugh properly, she was able to elicit a series of cough-like little whimpers that signalled her glee over something.

Osprey had come a long way in the eighteen days since her birth. Her eyes had been open for several days now, wide and blue and clear, even if her vision wasn't. She now recognized each of the three adults that frequented the den, though she had trouble differentiating her parents without an accompanying sniff. Both of them and Uncle Kisu (not that she knew him as such) had begun to present her with regurgitated meat, which she chewed with her brand new milk teeth. Her small ears had yet to truly open, yet she could make out some sounds; it was as if she were deep underwater, not that she knew to make the comparison.

Her sister and younger cousins had also continued to grow and develop and now the den was full of wobbly-legged pups on the go. At the moment, Osprey Jr. remained seated, watching the palest blob (Saēna) face-plant for the umpteenth time. Once down, she began to wriggle, which triggered a natural instinct within young Osprey's breast. She rose onto legs only slight less rubbery than her small cousin's and attempted to caper across the den to tackle her. She stumbled and slowed several times but eventually reached her target.

With a happy yip, she flung herself at the smaller, paler puppy, their bellies smacking together with a muted thwack. For a second, all of Osprey's weight pressed down on Saēna, though she found her feet a moment later and stood over top of her patchy relative at a perpendicular angle. She wriggled in place, her tail instinctively stiffening and arching over her back.

When comprehension came, as comprehension would, Saēna would never realize that her cousins were actually older than her. She would view them as siblings of some sort, without understanding why Kisu was her father and Pura's father, but not Osprey's or Tytonidae's. Right now, however, the differences between Hawkeye's litter and Pied's litter were very apparent in the comparative size of the pups as well as the developmental stage, so Osprey Jr. was still very capable of squashing her younger cousins.

Which would happen in three... Two... A wheezed oof sound flung Saēna's lips apart and sent breath stuttering out of her lungs when Osprey's pudgier and heavier belly smashed into hers. For a moment or two, the small white girl was stunned, her face screwed up in an expression of intense displeasure signalling the beginning of a crying fit, but soon Junior's weight lifted and she found some relief. She sniffled, holding back her desire to cry long enough for the desire to play to sweep over her instead in response to her cousin's wiggling.

She was happy to let Osprey be on top. She was more of a bottom girl anyway.

Saēna began an awkward back-and-forth tilting of her body that let her tail swing wildly side-to-side, drawing her legs in close and playfully poking one of her forepaws into her cousin's chest while reaching as best she could for her face with the other. Her mouth parted and her eyes shifted to the left, locking on to the stiffened leg that held her cousin over top of her. Osprey Jr. had already gone through the unpleasantness that was teething, but Saēna was right in the middle of it, and that leg was at a perfect angle to relieve some of her gum pain. Shoving up rather abruptly with the forepaw that was planted against the chest, Saēna twisted her head around, latched her still-toothless jaws onto Osprey's leg, and began to chew vigorously.

As Osprey wriggled on top, Saēna writhed on the bottom, the two of them tickling one another in the process. Although this loosed a whimpering laugh from the larger girl, she sought to escape it. But every time she tried to lift a stumpy forelimb to step over her cousin's pale, patchy figure, the smaller girl's jerking would stymie Osprey Jr.'s progress. Thusly thwarted, she felt rather stuck and voiced her frustration with a keening, yelping note, then sought to punish Saēna with a box about her rusty ears. It was equivalent to the bat of a kitten's paw.

Finally, Osprey Jr. ran out of options and sank to the floor. In doing so, she discovered herself freed from Saēna's ticklish wriggling. She jumped back onto all fours, only to belatedly realize that Saēna had been using her other foreleg as a teething toy this entire time. It was now damp and sticky with drool. Her small black head bent down to sniff at it, her face curious. Meanwhile, her beady blue eyes remained fastened upon Saēna.

Spurred perhaps by a particular twitch, Osprey Jr. pounced toward the younger, smaller pup again. This time, she stood next to her, looming slightly, her small forepaws lifting off the floor one after the other in a soft drumbeat. After a few seconds of this, she bowed forward and barked very sharply, the message clear even if it lacked words (and even if Saēna couldn't necessarily hear it): It's playtime!

If Osprey's attention span was limited, then Saēna's was practically non-existent. Every movement her cousin made poked a sensitive spot on the younger girl's tummy or rib-cage that resulted in shivers of a new sensation throughout her entire body. Lacking both the vocabulary and comprehension to understand these shivers to be nothing more but a ticklish response, and unsure whether they felt good or bad, Saēna could only whine accusingly and twitch her body this way and that in futile attempts to escape the torture. Each time she thought she was safe, the sensation would blossom elsewhere.

Presently assaulted by Osprey's tickling, the girl forgot why she was chewing on the darker pup's limb and let go of it altogether. Thus freed, the dark-furred Raptor babe launched a second attack on Saēna, but this time she wiggled and beat the ground alongside the patchy pup rather than on top of her. Saēna's light blue eyes rolled in Osprey's direction just in time for the older pup's play bow to send a surge of instinct into her body.

She was quick to react, hopping to her feet and throwing her own chest to the ground beneath her while her rump lifted and wiggled in the air. Though she could not hear the taunts thrown her way, she responded with her own round of raucous barks and the tumbling of her long tongue to hang out the side of her lips. Without hesitation and without realizing it was somewhat impolite to act so suddenly, the girl threw herself at Osprey with toothless mouth widened into a stretched oval aimed directly at the other's stubby left ear.

Egged on by her older cousin's movements, Saēna flipped over and bounced unsteadily to her feet, soon bowing forward into a position that mimicked Osprey's own. The dark pup's soft ear flaps twitched in response to the barks, which were mercifully muffled thanks to her undeveloped ear canals. They were just loud enough to trigger a volley of barks in response, as well as a hastened drumming of her little black forepaws.

Suddenly, the puny, patchy puppy launched herself at Osprey Jr., her maw yawning open to reveal healthy, pink gums. The larger youth flinched, her dark ears pinning backward, though not quickly enough to escape Saēna's soft bite. She felt pressure pinching against her left ear and instinctively began to shake her head, eventually tugging free from Saēna's tenaciously toothless grip.

The force of release made her stumble slightly, dropping into an awkward crouch. She bounced back a moment later, dark legs flailing in the air rather haphazardly in the paler youngster's direction. Simultaneously, her much more toothy jaws flapped repeatedly in a noisy mixture of warning barks and growls which Saēna would never even hear.

She managed to get an awkward, gummy hold on her cousin's ear. Her singular purpose was to hold onto that ear until she could hold on no longer, but it turned out that toothless gums were an inefficient means of holding on to anything. Junior was able to shake her off with only an ounce of effort, sending the smaller pup flailing for purchase on the den floor and failing to find it. She tumbled, springing to her feet a moment later and issuing a series of weird grunts that were, in her mind, ferocious howls and roars.

Osprey's feet came punching through the air and Saēna was quick to respond by rearing back on her own hind legs and pouncing forward herself. It was likely visually similar to a slap fight. Her mouth peeled wide open as she flailed her legs around, her head bobbing wildly as she attempted to catch one of the slightly older pup's paws with her slobbery lips.

Saēna reared onto her hind legs too, the two flailing at one another like a pair of wild stallions sparring somewhere in the wild, wild west, perhaps over a mare. The smaller tot landed a lucky blow, her tiny left forepaw striking Osprey Jr. just beneath her right eye, making her cheekbone smart. The elder puppy yelped involuntarily, feeling a bolt of indignant anger shoot through her. Before she could contemplate retaliation, she found herself inexplicably thrown off balance (for Saēna had managed to latch onto her right foreleg, halting it midair and stalling her momentum) and pitching forward so that her chin hit the floor with a quiet crack.

The impact dazed her slightly and she lay still for a moment. Slowly, she began to pick herself up off the den floor. Although Junior was no crier, her lip trembled at the ache in her cheekbone and the newer, worse pain in her mouth. Her tongue darted from her blunt maw, flicking little beads of blood into the air that splattered on the floor. She didn't notice, though Saēna or any onlooking adult might notice the watery blood pooling against her gums and teeth, the result of a bitten tongue.

Trying to quell her own urge to whimper and whine, Osprey Jr. soon discovered something that helped her forget: a metallic scent that made her wounded mouth suddenly water. It made her think of the piles of mush the adults brought home. She growled as hunger pinched her belly. Little did she know, the little Redleaf-DiSarinno was smelling her own blood.

A flurry of action landed Saēna flat on her rear while Osprey Jr. became well-acquainted with the floor. An older Saēna might not have expected to land a hit, but this younger Saēna pranced about proudly on her tippy-toes, callously celebrating her achievement and dismissing her cousin's misfortune altogether. Consequence was too new and abstract a concept for the young puppy to grasp. In her little world, whatever had happened to her cousin wasn't her fault!

Oblivious though she was to Osprey's pain, she wasn't oblivious to the tang of blood that suddenly filled the air. In a similar fashion, the girl began expressing signs of hunger, from the quiet smacking of her lips to her cyclical pacing in place. She wasn't yet conscious of the source of the smell, only that it was familiar and usually came before a full tummy. The pup's own half-attempted growls reverberated from her chest as Saēna suddenly grew rowdy in her search for food.

The adults had been keeping a close eye on the girls and, seeing Saēna so riled by the scent, decided to temporarily separate them. All three of them knew that fighting spurred by the scent of blood was unlikely, but all three of them also knew better than to take the chance of one of the pups mistaking the scent for something edible. Saēna was whisked into the strong embrace of her biological father, who distracted her from Junior's blood scent and engaged her in a short play session and a brief feeding of non-wolf meat, which smelled the same as Junior's blood to her. He even managed to lull her to sleep, eventually.

Before either of the girls could get too wound up by the scent, the adults broke up the small fight, with Kisu ushering Saēna to one side of the den and Hawkeye coaxing Osprey Jr. to another. Both were fed separately, Junior only being offered some chewed meat after her mother inspected her mouth and made sure the wound wasn't bad enough to warrant calling Blue Willow to make a house call.

Osprey Jr. made quite a few funny faces while attempting to eat, her tongue nearly constantly flicking out of her mouth as she tried unsuccessfully to eat around the pain. Eventually, she gave up and comforted herself by latching onto one of the Alpha female's teats instead. The warm milk didn't bother her swollen, aching tongue much at all and, successfully soothed, the rough-'n'-tumble pup fell fast asleep.