Wolf RPG

First it was the eyes — now, a few days later, one of his ears had done a thing. It happened while he was sleeping; yet as soon as it finished unfurling, everything changed. The entire universe was made up of irritating little things and, aside from being the Chief Irritant most of the time, Titmouse was generally unaware. It wasn't until the little fam-bam had moved all the little potatos to a new base of operations that things began to really get weird.

Titmouse was, strangely enough, very sensitive to sound. The slightest chirp of his siblings was caught in his newly uncovered ear, or their shuffling, or the sound of his own pulse while his face was burrowed against the pile of bodies. Most of all, he could hear a dull drip drip drip of ceaseless drip noise drip interrupting his precious - drip! - 

UUWAAAUUUUGHHHNNHAA! (that was his word for sleep).

She did not like kids. It was decided.

Liffey wrinkled her nose with irritation as she stirred from her sleeping spot wedged between Lagan and Finley. Things were getting a little cranky for the growing young wolf being packed into the cave day in and day out with the entire pack. They were too close of quarters for even grown wolves let alone these needy, obnoxious puppies crawling everywhere. Some of them weren't quite as bad as the others. This one was the worst.

Little did Liffey realize that it seemed as though she and this one - who her mother had so aptly named Screech - were both rather sensitive to sound. Finley did little more than shift a bit when the puppy on the other side of her squalled like a banshee. Liffey however lifted her head and looked over Finley's back to peer at the shrieking bandit with distaste.

"Would you be quiet for once?" she grumbled to herself. She laid her head down on her mother's flank to try an go back to sleep, but kept a stink eye on the pup for the moment to make sure it did as it was told.

It would be some time still before Titmouse understood spoken language. Right now he couldn't even hear Liffey's desperate (and somewhat angst-filled) plea for silence through his own hubbub. No, the boy was losing his shit (in more ways than one). It was a vicious cycle for sure.

Step One: Be an angry colicky little shit.
Step Two: Discover ears, proceed to scream. (And poop a little.)
Step Three: Scream more because you're too damn loud.

Repeat.

Titmouse was at full power now. His lungs would expand to their max potential, and then he'd deflate like the most irritating whoopie-cushion. After six or seven big breaths of this he began to tire out, and then there was an abrupt — HRRNK! (as if he'd swallowed a bug) — and silence. Except for the sound of his fat body falling flat on the floor again. His poor little voice box had wheezed its last screech, and the little Firebird was left with the same horrified, hungry-bird expression on his face (opening and closing repeatedly) but no sound came out.

Her pleas didn't work, and soon Liffey was nudging Finley and whimpering at her. "Mom, he won't stop..!" she whined miserably as her mother lifted her head to take in the scene. She could do little more than frown at her daughter and mumble something to the effect of He'll tire himself out eventually that ended up sounding more like hulltrrrr suffenshlyyy before she was passed out again. Liffey scoffed at her mom indignantly before standing up and walking around her to face the evil demon herself since obviously no one else was going to do anything about it.

It took about three steps to round Finley's prone form to stand before the beast, but somehow in that time, he had fallen silent. Liffey gaped at him, her head tilting in curiosity as he gulped at the space in front of him. Anxiety tugged at her then and she slipped onto her belly to crawl towards it. She might want to snap the damn thing's neck 99% of the time, but that didn't mean she wanted him to get hurt.

"Hey.. hey, you okay?" Liffey asked as she leaned towards him, stopping when her nose was about four inches above its head. She sniffed at him earnestly, but did her best to pull her muzzle away whenever it seemed like she might be about to touch him. No one wanted that.

It felt wrong to suddenly not have any way to alert to adults. They were probably going to have a great big party to celebrate The Day The Thing Was Quiet; however, for the time being, Titmouse didn't know what to do. He was squirming on his back when Liffey came to investigate him. Her nearby face gave him something to focus on and reach for — although each time he got close, she ducked him. Through it all Titmouse was making some kind of noise, but it was nothing like the screech he had come to be known for. It was more like a wheeze. Some kind of sad parody of a fart. A tittering, bird-like, but ultimately not right sound. Maybe eventually he'd regain something that he'd lost. For now though, the poor boy had screamed himself hoarse.

Something was wrong with him. Liffey stared blankly at the pup, wondering what on earth it was doing. Was this normal for them to make sounds like this? She'd been stuck in close quarters with him for only a few days, but she was pretty sure it had never made sounds like this before. This was worrisome. Enough so that she even forgot to be annoyed that he kept trying to grab her nose as she sniffed at him.

"What's wrong with you?" Liffey asked after a moment, frowning at him as though he might be sounding weird on purpose, "Can't you like.. talk anymore? Make the sounds you were before. Remember those?" She turned her head to the side, eyeing him purposefully. Maybe it really was a problem with his memory. Had he screamed his brain out of his head?

This wasn't right at all. Titmouse couldn't exactly fix himself though - it would take time. Maybe some tea. Except that wolves couldn't brew a decent cuppa and they likely didn't know of the medicinal qualities of boiled herbs. Thus Titmouse might just survive this event without a voice at all! Oh the horror. Surely the adults would see Liffey as some kind of miracle worker if that were the case; he'd no longer be shrieking for hours at a time, being forced to give up his colicky, car-alarm voice for something more bearable.

The boy squawked and wiggled, but didn't say anything. His noises didn't stop but they were subdued, and the more and more Liffey fussed over him, the more and more likely the adults were to wake up and find them. The girl spoke and the babe gurgled. The closer her face got to him the more grabby he became, until Titmouse was lucky enough to latched his little mouth (freshly erupted baby teeth and all) upon the girl's shiny dark nose.

Liffey was quite troubled at that point. She glanced at the older wolves sleeping around them, debating whether or not she wanted to wake someone up for help. Part of her knew it was the right thing to do, but another part was afraid that it was somehow her fault that the puppy had gotten broken. The girl didn't want to get in trouble, not when her pride was still smarting over having tripped her mother during the move.

It was this thought that kept her from crying out when the little bastard caught her nostril with his sharp as hell teeth. She sucked in a sharp breath and held it desperately tight in her throat, her ears and tail tucking tightly against her body. She lifted a paw and nudged it against the pup's head, trying to push him off of her. The pain of his bite and the pull of her nose when the little wretch wouldn't let go unwound her resolve though, and a high-pitched whine began to escape her throat as the tug of war began.

As Raven could attest, Titmouse had quite the mouth on him. When he grappled on to Liffey's face he let out a series of chirps that could've been misconstrued as giggling — and maybe it was — but the sound coming from his throat fluctuated like a preteen through puberty. It was high one second, crackling, and then tapering off to a dull sound every few seconds. He just couldn't get his voice to work.

Plus, well, holding on to Liffey was hella fun. He almost forgot about the strain to his vocal chords while holding tightly to her nose. She didn't struggle much (which was no fun), but within moments Titmouse could sense some kind of shift in the girl. Like she was holding back (tears, her own screeching, her breath, he couldn't really tell that much). And then Titmouse let go for a second. Just long enough to gather a deep breath — because he latched on again, prickling the tough leather of Liffey's nostrils with his needle-teeth.

Maybe later he could find her a nice new nose-ring to plug the tear he was working on.

It didn't let go, and as patient a wolf as Liffey was, it very quickly became too much for her to bear. Her whines reached a fever pitch as the pup finally released her. She tried to move out of the way, but the little bastard was far too quick. He latched on again, and this time she yelped aloud - a yelp that turned quickly into a snarl.

Liffey's lips peeled back as she twisted her head to snap at the boy's little paws, her hackles lifting as she posed to use dominance to make him release her. She was careful not to actually touch him for she knew instinctively that as annoying as the beast was, she should not actually hurt the children of alphas. She shoved her muzzle forward as him as she did it, trying to startle him into letting go. If all else failed, she would have to get even more aggressive. But Finley in the corner had already stirred and was looking sharply at them. She would be upon the pups before anything further happened.

Nothing stopped little Titty from gnawing at her nose. The noises she made - and the vibrations - should've spurred some kind of deeply basic, instinctual reaction from him. He was too young. Maybe too stupid. Either way, Titmouse found it more entertaining than frightening, especially when Liffey snarled outright at him. He did let go for a moment to try and immitate her expression, but then gurgled, chirped a laugh, and launched himself and his teeth at her snout again.

Finley knew trouble when she saw it. She probably should have intervened earlier when their soft noises had been tugging at her, trying to pull her out of her sleep. She'd been reluctant to let the dream she was having go - it had been a nice one, a warm one. But when finally she awoke, it was lost to her completely. Instead, she was presented with reality - one in which it looked like her daughter was about to commit murder.

The alpha stood when she saw Liffey lunge over the pup, alarmed but not completely so. There was nothing outwardly violent in her daughter's actions - merely dominant. In a way she was proud. Liffey was always such a passive creature and she wanted to see her grow more confident. But then Titmouse mocked her playfully and lunged for another bite, and Finley saw murder in Liffey's eyes.

In four quick steps, Finley was upon them both, snapping her jaws centimeters before the pup's eyes to make him back off, then cuffing him lightly on the muzzle with her teeth. Liffey already was shrinking away, the threat dissipating on that end. She pushed Screech back away from Liffey and moved between the two of them, raising her head above Titmouse with a frown. "You need to go back to sleep," she said, glancing back at Liffey "And maybe on opposite sides of the cave."

Without further ado, Finley scooped Titmouse up by the nape of his neck and brought him back to his siblings. She dropped him into the puppy pile, then shifted Towhee half on top of him just for good measure. With that, she curled up beside them all to make sure she would feel any movement, in case Titmouse had now developed a taste for her daughter's nose and meant to creep out to have another bite at some point that night. Liffey it seemed had the same idea, for she slunk off away from the rest of the pack to settle down for the night, her eyes facing the end of the tunnel where she could see snow falling softly.