Now that his ears nearly piqued to full height, Merrit discovered he could truly hear. Their tips no longer sheltered the sensitive drums, and the world became a place filled with more sounds than he had ever imagined possible to exist. They drew him back to the surface tonight, as the sun stroked her waning beams against the den's dark walls. While the boy enjoyed the novelty of the rendezvous, he found himself back in the birthing den often, for no nostalgic reason. Simply to study the light and the strong earthen walls, as much as a child his age could. As dusk settled over Easthollow, he rose from the underground to meet the last rays of daylight, and propped himself in the blades of soggy grass just at the surface, set his ears, and listened.

A light spattering of rain fell from the patchwork of clouds, while the evening light sank with brilliant rays across the glistening grass. The night chorus chirped from amongst the plants and shrubbery. Merrit hadn't yet discovered the tiny composers, but he often wondered what sort of things the noises came from. He had tried to find them, a great many times, but soon as he ever neared the sounds, they stopped and frustrated his plans to find them. Still, he would try again tonight - perhaps with a different plan - but for the moment he rested, content enough to listen to their song as it wove with the plink rain against the leaves, and the faintest rush of wind.

While his ears kept preoccupied by the song of the night, his watch remained tuned to his vicinity. To remain both aware of how the shadows shifted with the descent of the sun, as well as on who came and went from the rendezvous.

Merrit met Brynn's greeting with a slow blink of his eyes, receiving her affection with the slightest lick in return, and coupled with the stillness characteristic of the boy. She settled, and he found his watch trailing to stay on her. In all the information he had gathered in his short month alive, he had yet to form many thoughts about this one, beyond the basic trust he placed in all the wolves of Easthollow. A few he could identify by their delightful melodies, but though he searched, he couldn't recall Brynn's.

He turned his head ever slightly with a thoughtful shift in plans. Did this one have a melody? He had watched his mother make sounds to others, only for them to make sounds back, enough for Merrit to know that this could prove true if he tried so, too. The boy hardly gave his voice to anyone, only because he treasured the sounds of others, and that gave him so little time to discover his own. Here, he needed to give something of himself to learn something of her, so with the slightest breath he questioned, "whoo," wanting nothing but some sort of verbal response, so he could hear the song and rhythm that her voice made.

His content showed through the gentle wag of his tail. She did have a voice, and one as unique as the rest. Much of what she said swarmed right over his head, yet he found some words familiar. Of course, every word sounded a little different from wolf to wolf. The deep rumblings of his father were starkly different than the high and lovely chords of his mother, for the best example - but the basic structure of words was always there, and he clutched onto this familiarity in the ones Brynn spoke.

The intent of her nuzzle went unnoticed. Though Merrit would tussle with his siblings, he more often found himself engaged in finer, quieter matters. Watching the shadows, listening to the night. His curious eyes settled on Brynn again. If he could remember her syllables, could he copy her song? "Nnn-n-ight." That was one he had heard before, one his mother only used when the sky grew dark, and he tipped his head and waited for a sign from Brynn that he'd spoken right.

Merrit warmed at her praise, and his content showed in a controlled and single flick of his tail. He enjoyed her voice and her words, and though he understood the meaning to only a few, he tried to store them all away to decipher them later. At the moment, he latched onto a pattern he hadn't heard in anyone's speech before and tried to repeat it himself.

"Right," he said, "Night."  Their similar sounds intrigued him, the way they chimed off one another, and he repeated again, "Right. Night. Right. Night." He tipped his head, and reversed them. "Night. Right." And though the order changed, the effect remained the same, so he found himself asking one of his favourite words he knew: "Why?"

She spoke in simple enough terms, and he grasped her explanation in a grand and encompassing way. The information he gathered was interesting, yes, but his brow furrowed, because, despite this, her words didn't do much to satisfy the question he'd asked.

Merrit pressed his lips into a thin line. "No." he said with a stiff shake of his head. "Why?" He tried to fish for better words, but a new feeling swelled in his chest. The little boy, not knowing what to do, fixed his brow in a firmer furrow and quirked out his tongue, as if that might help him think. In the end, he simply settled on, "Why's same?" 

He stared at Brynn right on back, patient in her silence. Sometimes being quiet meant he wouldn't get an answer - but Brynn seemed smart, and her face looked like she was thinking. When her mouth lit with a smile, he found himself meeting her with the quirk of a grin and a mechanical shift of his tail.

Finally.

"Rhy-ming." He repeated, satisfied with the new concept she offered. Words that sounded the same - ended the same - but were different. Night. Right. Merrit shifted a pensive glance to the sky, and moved his lips ever slightly as he ran over the words he knew. "Night... right... light? Bright??" And his smile grew as they syllables fell from his tongue, relishing in this new kind of melody.

Alright! His quiet excitement piqued in the subtle shift of his smile to something brighter, something that near touched his eyes. Not only was he grasping the things he was learning, but Brynn seemed just as eager to be here with him, teaching him and helping him to understand.

He turned his head with another glance to the sky. "Day?" he repeated, and felt the word on his tongue. Day. Ay. Merrit soon found his brow furrowed and his gaze shifting to the ground. "Play." he offered with a tiny nod and turned his head again. "Say." This one was much harder and, after a minute of fruitless searching, he gave a single shake of his head. Not giving up. Just... seeking guidance, and he looked at her expectantly. "What 'bout you - you've words? New 'uns?"

He cupped his ears and inclined himself closer, sorely aware of how very little he knew about the world. While he could glean a lot through his private investigations, the adults always seemed to have something of an upper hand when it came to understanding the things he didn't, and Merrit was not below taking opportunity of this. He met Brynn's suggestions with a slow nod and turned them over, trying to recall where he'd heard them before.

"Stay," he repeated, with a slow nod to affirm he knew that one already "Mah uses tha'un."  And for how many times she did, he didn't know how he'd forgotten. But ray and clay - now those were new, and he shook his head and watched his teacher with continued expectation that he wouldn't dwell in the unknowing much longer. "Was' ray? An' was'a clay?"

Brynn's explanation resounded with the boy, and his ears perked up. He'd never had a name to give the light that had brightened the underground dwelling of his den, but now he did, and his mouth quirked ever slightly up as he glanced about them. There was light here, too; there were rays all around, casting bright against the shadows as the sun pushed through the bruise of rainclouds on the western front. "Ray," he repeated, and the word and its meaning settled on his tongue.

He had never dug so far as to find clay before. Truth be told, he hadn't done much digging at all, if only because he hadn't seen use for burrowing in dirt before. But the prospect of things being buried underground, thing you couldn't find on the surface - now there was something worth exploring, and Merrit rose on eager paws. "We go find clay," he told her, and already moved past his teacher to find a diggable spot, because in his mind that was the next logical step in the process of discovery. He could only listen so much before he had to go and do, test and try, and find these things out for himself.

He trusted Brynn followed, and didn't see the need to look back to see if she actually had. He was much too focused, anyway, on scouting the ground for a prime spot to unearth this thing called clay. Everywhere was just a little bit muddy from the light spray of rain, and if he looked somewhere where the dirt was already mud, surely that meant the clay would be mud, too. He had to find somewhere dry, somewhere shelthered... but where?

The standing stones! For a second, the excitement of thought shot his body rigid, but he quickly spun and wove himself right back around to dash past Brynn toward the hill that held the strange guardians of rock. Most of the stones stood upright, pointing toward the sky, but he remembered there was one that formed a structure unlike the others - two pillars, with a larger slab balanced from the top of one to the top of the other, to form a sort of cave. And caves didn't let rain in - and sure enough, as he loped up to his prize, he found the large rock had kept the ground at least a little bit drier than the grass in the direct path of the rain.

He wagged his tail quirked his mouth in a smile. Only now did he cast a glance over his shoulder to beckon Brynn to join him with a whooping, "c'mon!" before he turned, stooped down, and began to dig.