Little Sugar had become a night owl, preferring the quiet of nighttime to the comparative pandemonium of daylight. Of course, it was difficult to sleep during the day, with what seemed like a dozen wolves stomping around the den, though once sleep captured her, it kept her. Often, the adults and even
@Elfie and
@Weejay left the foursome in the den by themselves; these quiet hours were her best chance for sleep.
Presently wide awake in the dark of midnight while her housemates slept, Sugar Glider unwound herself from the tangle of limbs tucked in close beside
@Finley. She moved toward the den's entrance, only a shade lighter than the shadowy interior. She peeked outside, head tilting as she listened to a wind soughing through the copse. Some noises made her restive, even disturbed her in some peculiarly visceral way, yet this one she found comforting.
The pups' parents had begun allowing them to poke around the entryway, though Sugar had yet to step foot outside the den. The whispering wind gently tickled her face, bringing myriad smells to her pinked nose, caused her to carefully pick her way into the open. She didn't go far. In fact, as soon as she emerged, she stopped, breathless as the walls dropped away. Even in the darkness, she could sense the wilderness sprawling all around her.
Weejay was a night-owl for a different reason than Sugar Glider, but tonight she had only just lightly brushed the realm of sleep before she was jolted awake for reasons unknown to her. For a moment she sat in the dark in silence, listening to the gentle summer breeze that came in and stirred their pelts. She could hear the rhythmic breathing of her family, the quiet bustle of trees and leaves outside.. but in between these normal night sounds, Weejay also heard something unusual: a scuffle of feet near the entrance of the den.
If klaxon alarms existed in wolf brains, it certainly would have blared off in Weejay's mind. Outside was where her flower garden was! She bolted up and flew to the exit, coming to a slamming halt as she saw Sugar Glider's form eclipsed by night-time darkness.
Possessive of her flower patch, Weejay scowled and promptly placed her body between the green fronds and the dark-eyed child. She knew that her grandma would probably be awake soon to claim Sugar Glider back to the den, but in the mean-time Weejay bullishly protected her flower-patch with a scowling expression.
The new moon lent her no light, though her eyes acclimated to the darkness after a moment, her pitch irises particularly suited to night vision. She took another step forward, eyes sweeping the dark expanses on every side save behind her striped back. Sugar looked over her shoulder and could see the den's mouth, a hole darker than the rest of the night. Reassured by it, she moved to face forward again, when she saw a stirring in the entryway and suddenly, Weejay was there beside her.
Her heart had skipped a beat in surprise, though it steadied quickly and she waved her tiny tail at her cousin. It stilled when she noted the older girl's scowl. She did not speak yet, though she understood many words and phrases and could read expressions and body language fairly adeptly. Something was the matter with Weejay, based on the glower on her face, but what?
"Ung?" Sugar said sotto voce. It wasn't so much the late hour and the fact that their family members were sleeping nearby; low volume was just sort of her default setting due to her sensitivity to sound. "Ung? Ay?"
Weejay hovered over her little flower patch, much in the manner of a brooding hen. Her eyes were narrowed; what little light the dark night time sky afforded scarcely measured to the depth nor the darkness of her scowl, which pulled over her features in a heavy frown.
Yet possessive as she was of the last remaining pound of earth she could control and shape, Weejay's bristling settled as Sugar Glider's tail wagged and then slowed. Feeling guilty for her instinctive shortness, Weejay stepped back and nipped one small clover flower from the patch, offering it to the younger girl with a quietly apologetic smile.
Her eyes, even darker than the moonless night, watched as Weejay plucked a stem from the patch behind her. Sugar cocked her head as the offering was made, tail stirring once more. She still didn't understand what was going on, though she reached forward to sniff at the clover blossom. It tickled her pinked nose, prompting a soft sneeze.
"Ike, ay," the pup murmured. There was a rustling from the nearby den, causing her to freeze and peer that way, though it subsided without any sign of movement out of doors. Sugar's attention slowly returned to Weejay. "Ike for."
Certain that it made absolute sense to her playmate, the tinier pup once more studied their nighttime surroundings. There were no colors; everything was some shade of black or gray. It was quiet, save for the occasional sound of the wind whispering through the trees. The air was cool, scented with the familiar odors of the woods. It all suited Sugar quite well; although she couldn't possible articulate it (even to herself), she felt like she was in her element.
That was until a strange noise floated on the air. It wasn't very loud at all, though it was jarring in the quiet. Hoo, hoo! Hoo, hoo! The soft black fur on Sugar's spine stood on end even as her ears folded. She shot her cousin a questioning glance.
Weejay giggled as the clover tickled Sugar Glider's nose, prompting a quiet sneeze.
"Shh!" Weejay shushed, a smile fringing her lips. It was okay now that she knew Sugar Glider wasn't interested in trampling her flowers. While Sug seemed enraptured with their surroundings, Weejay was browsing the thin stalks and squinting at them with what little light the moon afforded. There was goldenrod and clover and meadowgrass -- she frowned as she saw the indentation of rabbit teeth along the broad leaflets of clover. She was about to say something about how much she disliked that when a noise distinctly unfamiliar burst from the nighttime quiet.
Weejay could not help but flinch instinctively, glancing towards her cousin with a confused glance.
"Wazzat?" She hisspered (thanks
@Yami for that golden nugget) at Sugar in fear, feeling suddenly very out in the open and vulnerable.
"Wazzat?" her cousin whispered, an edge of fear in her voice and written on her shadowed face as well. Sugar blinked beetle black eyes at her, as bewildered by Weejay's trepidation as by the noise itself. She was the elder, so why didn't she have all the answers? Should she feel even more frightened, if the older girl was clearly uneasy?
There was a quiet rustling, just barely loud enough to be heard, yet the peculiar noise did not come again, not even after several long, quiet moments. Sugar felt her uneasiness slipping away as she suddenly noticed the familiar hum of crickets. Had they only just started singing or had they been chorusing all along?
Soon, the disruption was entirely forgotten as Sugar resumed her study of their dark surroundings. Although there was no moon tonight, the youngster's attention eventually drifted skyward, noting the little bits of light here and there. She mistook them for fireflies at first, though when she sat back on her haunches and tried to swat at one, her paw came in contact with nothing but air. And the little light did not so much as move.
"Ay?" she said, breaking the long silence. "Sat, ay? Sat?" She pointed her pink nose at the stars.
Weejay hunkered down, hair on end. A glance in Sugar Glider’s direction and she saw trepidation reflected back at her in those oilspill eyes; it awoke a sense of sisterly protectiveness in the girl. She rose slowly, ears strained — but other than rustling, no further noise came.
Weejay striaghtened out her posture and gave a dismissive flick of her tail. That was it — the intruder was gone — a chorus of crickets rose in the still summer air, and all normalcy seemed resumed.
Shedding her sense ends of wariness Weejay turned back and inspected her flowers. A stalk of goldenrod had been bent back. Weejay corrected it with a thin-lined forming of her lip. Hearing Sugar swat at something behind her Weejay turned back around, following her gaze skyward. She was obviously grabbing for stars — it seemed like a fun game to Weejay, who wanted to join in despite how nonsensical it was. Those are stars.
Weejay informed with a lilting smile - then she jumped up and snapped at a distantly twinkling star, unsuccessful in netting it, of course.
They were called stars, according to her older and wiser cousin. "Stas," little Sugar echoed, her voice a thoughtful murmur. The name itself didn't explain what they were, nor did an explanation from Weejay seem forthcoming. "Stirs..." she repeated, unaware of the slight alteration in her pronunciation.
She stared for a while before noticing something else: a sort of mist up there among the stars. Somehow, Sugar knew that trying to reach up and wave it away wouldn't work any better than swatting at the stars themselves. But it looked so wispy, like a cloud, and near enough to breathe in. Accordingly, the tot sucked in a long breath, though the Milky Way remained still, millions of miles out of reach.
But then something up there did move and Sugar's breath left her in a noisy gasp. "Sat? Satsat?" she questioned eagerly, pink nose pointing at Weejay, then at the sky, then at Weejay again, wondering if the older girl had seen the star shooting across the hazy heavens.
After her naturally unsuccessful attempt to grab at the stars, Weejay settled for something a bit closer to home: turning back to tending her garden. She had already nipped back a frail stalk of dying goldenrod when Sugar Glider gasped, her gaze bent to the celestial realm above.
Weejay's eyes were slow to track Sugar Glider's direction, and when she peered up into that endless navy, she saw nothing but obscure twinklings and the pale shimmering of the moon. "Stars." Weejay corrected, but not sternly. Placing the stalk between her teeth, Weejay plucked the fading clutch of goldenrod from its siblings and inspected its roots curiously.
"Star," Weejay repeated patiently. Sugar blinked thrice as she processed this, her eyes lifting once more. There was no sign of the shooting star now, just the stillness of the other stars. So, some moved and others didn't? The small pup pondered that at length, all the while staring upward and wishing for more of them to mobilize. But none ever did. The heavens remained utterly motionless, even the haze lingering rather than scudding away as clouds tended to do during the daytime.
After a while, Sugar's eyelids grew heavy and a great yawned shook her tiny frame even as it forced her jaws apart. She had no sense of time whatsoever, so she had no idea how long she and Weejay had been out here, stargazing and tending their garden, respectively. But her sleepy attention drifted toward the glimmer of gold at the eastern horizon and she instinctively knew, on some level, that was day was going to break soon.
"Nini, ay," Sugar murmured, ambling over to the den's mouth and climbing inside, curling up in a ball with her bottom resting against
@Pox's face and falling fast asleep just moments before the other residents of the den would begin to stir.
Weejay was off in her own world, not at all aware that Sugar Glider lingered nearby for some time. Eventually a golden ribbon bloomed in the dark navy of the sky above, and the stars gradually lost their lustre as a sheen of orange crept through seemingly endless tides of cobalt. Weejay looked up, startled -- Sugar Glider had spoken something and thus, had shook her from her distant reverie.
She waved a paw in response belatedly, but Sugar Glider was already gone. Troubled by the peaking rays of nascent dawn, Weejay pulled one last weed from her garden and scuttled quickly towards the den, before Eljay awoke and discovered his daughter taking night-time adventures.