Forward dating a ~week so I have walking & hearing children
It was time to enact her revenge. She had no remorse. These hellhounds had kept her from sleeping, and she would delight in doing the same to them.
“C’mere. We’re getting sun today. For my sanity,” she snickers as she nudges a sleeping @Katla towards the glowing entrance at the end of their whelping den, “otherwise I just might murder you.”
She scoops a paw beneath @Swift, “and you, I’ll save for last.”
With her teeth the pair of them are hoisted up by the scruffs. They were starting to get too big to carry together, she strains to keep her head above ground and jostles them out into the light of that fall morning. The warmth is rich on her pelt, she places her children into the grass to have her own roll in it.
Once he could see and as his limbs grew stronger and stronger, Swift became ever more difficult to corral. He was aware now that there was much more to his world, and the less need he had of his mother’s and sister’s heat, the more inclined he was to explore it. But only on his terms.
And this was not on his terms.
Tauris’ son was dead asleep — all four paws stuck up in the air and his tail out straight — when she came to rouse them. Swift grumbled as her paw came beneath him, refusing to budge. But before he knew it his mother had him aloft by the scruff, and further grumbles and growls proved not to dissuade her from disturbing his snooze.
He let himself go limp in her jaws, and when she placed he and Katla in the grass, still he played catatonic. Swift ragdolled forward; his forehead and snout plunged into the earth; his forelegs flung toward his arse upon which he only half-sat. And there he stayed, the little puffs of breath rising his chest and stirring the grit between the blades of grass the only sign that he was very much alive.
"No!" Katla didn't know many words yet but this one seemed to her to be the most useful. While she didn't quite get what it meant, she did know that it was to express displeasure at a situation. Such as this one. Where she was being nosed and prodded toward the bright entrance to the den, roused from a deep comfortable sleep.
Her mother was hearing none of it though, and it seemed her protests would be ignored. At least her brother was on her side. Though even united they were powerless against Tauris' mighty jaws. Before they knew it they were lifted up as one, and dropped into a thick bed of grass.
She glanced at her brother, who was stubbornly refusing to accept the change of scenery, but was distracted by a sudden dot zipping through the air. A bug! How they fascinated the little wolf, and she tried for a moment to follow its movement with her gaze. She lost it as Tauris entered her line of sight and her large ears perked up curiously. She was rolling around in the grass. She looked so silly!! A smile crept upon Katla's muzzle that grew until she let out a delighted squeal, bouncing clumsily to her mother, and in a patch of grass right beside her she dropped down to try rolling herself, even upside down still watching Tauris and trying to copy her movements. Was she doing it right??
She likes being a mother. She’s allowed to toss around in the dirt and sing silly songs and tell absurd stories. She can be domestic but not domesticated. She wants to show her children where the mushrooms grow, and the parts of the river you can cross by jumping between old logs and wet stones, and the excitement of it is that you just might fall in and be swept a ways downstream. She wanted to bring them to the valley’s tallest peak, up the steep footpath, so they could feel how cold the wind is and what the clouds look like when godrays part them.
Swift shows how he can be an immovable force, a little wolfling made of stone and bent on ignoring his mother’s persuasions. But at least one cracks, her little Katla taking a plop and swinging her limbs up to rake her spine about the ground.
“That’s right, Katty!” she laughs and shimmies beside her, “get the good scratch in." Another mischievous peek is given to the silver boy playing dead.
“A real shame about your brother. His life was so short. We’d better give him a proper burial.” She flips and blades of grass are kicked into the air with strokes of her hind legs, flecking over the boy.
Grass and dirt rained on him as he kept up the act, refusing to move even while bits and pieces tickled his ears. His head was empty of particular motive or specific goal, and he might have remained there indefinitely. But in mere moments he found himself bored and growing winded from trying to suck air through the earth itself.
With an undignified and loud snort, Swift swept up onto his feet and shot his mother and sibling a glare. But a long blade of grass balanced across his crinkled snout, drawing his blue eyes as it teetered and tottered. His focus shifted. In a flash, he tossed his muzzle and snatched it and, feeling quite proud of this accomplishment, began to parade his prize around his family.
He peacocked around them, head high and tail up, giving them cocksure sidelong glances as if to say, oh yeah?
Whatever game he thought he had won was anyone's guess.