The pups were growing faster than Bazi could have imagined. The den was starting to feel a little cramped with so many bodies vying for space - four of them unpredictably gassy and prone to escape attempts.
The children's adopted aunt had already missed The Opening of the Eyes. All four of them now stared at the world with pairs of beautiful baby blues that would soon fade into their adult colours; Bazi had bets on Kiv inheriting his mother's golden stare, but she would be wrong.
Today, she was in charge of him. One-on-one time was difficult to come by, and when the larger three began to doze against their mother's belly, Bazi saw her chance.
Paarthurnax had indicated that the pups might be ready to move on from boob, and this was a milestone that Bazi could
control. She had already prepared - more than her fair share of meat sat uncomfortably in her belly, carefully chewed and swallowed not long before.
"Psst, Kiv!" she called, shuffling on her belly to a clean spot of floor within the den.
"Come here!" With a few heaves and a strangled gagging sound, Bazi puked up a pile of warm, lumpy
grossness dinner for the pup's enjoyment. The smell of it rose slowly towards the ceiling.
His ears wouldn't open properly for a while yet, though his other senses (sight, smell, touch) told him everything Relonikiv needed to know about his present situation. His mother and siblings were resting and he was free to shuffle about the den. Aunt Bazi was around too and he favored her with a cherubic smile before going back to his explorations. When she spoke, he dully picked up on the noise and he looked at her again, expression inquisitive. He sniffed the air. It was her moving lips that really captured his attention. He grew still, watching.
Then she did something she had never done before: she opened her mouth and something red, pink and brown poured out of it onto the den floor. The runty pup blinked, perplexed but intrigued. He began scooting slowly toward the chunky mess. Then the smell hit him. His saliva glands activated and he whimpered happily. He began to wriggle much faster, suddenly very eager to reach what he instinctively understood was another form of food.
Lacking table manners of any kind, Relonikiv dove right into the heap of regurgitated meat. It was warm and soaked his snout and chest as he buried them in it. His tongue darted out to lick at the semi-solid sustenance. Behind him, his golden tail wagged rapidly.
Bazi couldn't remember ever eating the dark porridge that Relonikiv was now lapping up with gusto, but she must have. To think that her own regal mother had vomited in her presence once upon a time was utterly bizarre, but that too must have happened. It was natural - just.. strange.
"Omnomnomnom?" Bazi asked, forgetting (again) that the pup couldn't hear her, and settled down opposite the diminishing pile. Watching Relonikiv gorging himself on her sick reminded Bazi of the sour taste that lingered in her mouth, and she made a series of ugly faces as she struggled to get rid of it.
When he came across a chunk, Relonikiv scooped it into his mouth and rolled it around in there for a moment before experimenting with his tiny teeth. The sensation of sinking his fangs into yielding flesh brought a muffled yip of pure delight from the little puppy. Meat now chewed twice over dribbled from either side of his mouth, a disgustingly watery pinkish brown slurry.
He found another chunk and this time, he lifted his head toward the ceiling as if to assist it in sliding down the hatch. It became caught on his rear molars and he scrunched up his face and chewed quite theatrically, his mouth wide open and making disgusting smacking noises. Relonikiv eventually managed to chew it into a mush, which went down easily enough.
It all tasted glorious. He glanced up at Aunt Bazi and smiled in thanks, though he froze and stared at her quizzically for a moment as she pulled a series of strange faces. A bark of babyish laughter burst from him, his first real laugh, and he drummed his paws on the messy ground as if to say, Do it again!
Paarthurnax's runt tipped his head back to assist in passing food down the gastrointestinal tract. He didn't know it yet, and the execution lacked finesse, but he was doing exactly what he was supposed to. Bazi, who was not yet accustomed to puking on command, missed the whole thing whilst trying to rid her mouth of the foul aftertaste - and she probably wouldn't have known to be proud of him for reaching the milestone.
A delighted noise interrupted her
gurning. Bazi turned a perplexed face to look at the goldspun boy, who seemed to think her discomfort was utterly hilarious. She flashed the pup a calculating grin.
"Yeah? You think that's funny? OK..." Bazi lowered her head until she was level with the boy, thinking all the while of the most succulent meal she had ever eaten. Saliva rushed into her cheeks, pooling behind her teeth. She took a breath as if to say something..
.. and blew a raspberry of such magnitude and wetness into Relonikiv's face that it would appear as though he had fallen face-first into the river.
Aunt Bazi smiled at him, the expression rather more mischievous than usual. Relonikiv returned it, his tongue lolling from his short, tapered muzzle. He began to scramble forward toward her, his belly dragging through the meat stew, when she saved him the trouble by plopping down in front of him. The suddenness of it all elicited an involuntary, Ooooo... from the littlest boy and he leaned backward, only to swoop back in and press his nose to hers.
That was when she blew a raspberry, her lips flapping and flinging saliva right into his face. Relonikiv gave a little yip of surprise, blinking rapidly. When it was over and little ropes of sparkling drool wreathed his head, his blue eyes widened and he stared up at his aunt in curious bewilderment. Naturally, he began to smile, then reared up to plant his forepaws around Bazi's snout even as his whip-like tail wagged in rapid circles.
Eyes shining, he batted her muzzle this time to tell her, Do it again! He complemented the motion with a happy, demanding, squeaky little excuse for a bark.
As usual, her performance was a resounding success. A soaked and sticky Relonikiv latched on to her muzzle, slapping her with his ungainly paws. The attention could only mean he wanted more - it was the opposite of the behavour the pups displayed when faced with unwanted bath-time (and each day made them more wily).
Bazi didn't bother cleaning up the ropes of drool that stretched from her lips, but took a breath in preparation for round two. Just as she hit full capacity and began to push air through loose, flapping cheeks, the raspberry became something quite different. An enormous post-puke burp hijacked the show, and with that came an involuntary encore of the dinner service. Before she could do anything to stop it, puke was exiting her mouth instead of air and the face Relonikiv was holding became a mess of coughs, convulsions, and grey-brown slop. It soiled the boy's exposed belly and hind legs.
Bazi began winding up for another raspberry and Relonikiv's eyes widened accordingly, full of happy expectation. When a burp rattled from his aunt's mouth, he laughed in delight. When she began to vomit, he felt something thick and wet splashing him but really didn't differentiate. He was enjoying every minute of being coated in various sticky liquids by his beloved caretaker.
Then the hot, fresh smell hit him and, if possible, the boy's tail began to wag faster. He pushed off from Bazi's snout and looked down at his drenched belly and legs, then the puddle just beneath him on the den floor. With a squawk, Relonikiv bent down his head and began eagerly inhaling the soupy puke, which not only tasted even better than the first round but also went down the hatch more easily.
Relonikiv had no sense of what was and wasn't disgusting. Bazi watched him wolf down more of her vomit, and briefly wondered if he would ingest shit if it was presented to him as dinner. Probably, but she wasn't about to try. Bazi rubbed either side of her muzzle against the inside of her knee, smearing slimy spit and pre-chewed meat into her fur. A bath was imminent - but first, she would make sure Kiv was fed and tucked back in with the others. Stomach-churning though the process was, it was how wolves kept their young alive - and Bazi would gladly (sort of) repeat the process until it was no longer required of her.
He ate until he literally couldn't anymore, lest it all come bursting back out of him. With a happy groan, the puppy waddled sideways and collapsed just beyond the puddle of sick. Now that he was so full, he wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep somewhere warm. He peeped, his way of requesting that somebody, anybody, put him to bed. His eyes closed then, so he didn't know who it was that plucked him up by the scruff and placed him back near his mother and siblings. By the time he curled into a ball (as much as he could with such a tubby belly), he was already fast asleep.