Dragoncrest Cliffs Will be the day, a smile marking his face

Hougeda reminded Ephraim of the grotto that he'd been born into, and the familiarity of stone on all sides was of immense comfort to him. It made him miss his mother, his father, his brothers and sister, too. The scent of salt and rock was all around him and made him unable to shake thoughts of his family and his heart was weighed down by grief. Would he ever see them again? Would he and Rhakios ever get to tussle again, would Raleska yell at him and demand that he play again, would he and Illidan share another tug-of-war match over a rabbit's leg?

To try to quell his sorrow over his missing family, Ephraim turned his attention to his peers in Hougeda. Several adults made frequent appearances and the other pups were ever present. Ephraim was a little older than them, but there was no way for him to know it. Drageda's brood was energetic, far moreso than he was, and for the first couple of days he had been too reclusive to engage them. He spent a lot of time on his tummy, watching but shying away from contact.

But now he was watching the black-and-white one, with the shock of gold fur across his mantle, at whatever he was doing, and his tail stirred slowly through the moss. @Tux and Bat were most similar to his siblings in appearance and he was less nervous about them than Kiwi and Silkie for their familiarity. He swallowed thickly, stomach flip-flopping, cracked his narrow muzzle and issued a shy, "h-hi," that might hardly have been heard whisking over the carpeted cavern floor.

sorry this took so long to respond to!

he did not know how lucky he was, surrounded by such a loving and supported family.  what the older boy had gone through was such a foriegn concept to the thurfire litter that even if it was explained to him, tux might not have been able to understand.

he did notice how withdrawn the starkly marked pup was, but he was rather busy indulging himself in all of the luxuries that hougeda provided that he did not take the time to interact.  it was only when a meek greeting caught his attention did he raise his head from the weathered bone he'd carried from the whelping den, short tail wagging behind him.  

hei, he offered in trigedasleng, becuase obviously everybody knew it, right?  wanna play?

His shy greeting was returned with a word that, unbeknownst to him, came from a different language. It sounded much the same to him and he didn't notice the difference. What he did notice was Tux's wiggling tail, and his picked up a gentle wag to match it. Since being separated from his family, the boy worried that he wouldn't find a connection like the one he shared with his siblings among Drageda's youth, but step one was so far proving successful.

"'Kay," said the shy coywolf as he straightened up with a thin smile. His life would have panned out so differently had his family not been displaced; he had once thought himself superior and found the company of others boring, but that was when his life was cushy and easy. It was amazing how much he craved company and acceptance now, in strange waters. "Whatcha wan' play?" Chase-the-surf was a good game, but there was no ocean here, and he hadn't played much since fleeing with his family from the bear. Part of him had sort of forgotten how.

this boy was older, but he was not as solidly built as tux and although the little boy liked to win, he did not feel as if his first instinct — to wrestle — would be entirely fair.  he racked his brain for the rest of the games he knew how to play with his siblings (or by himself) and came up with, we could ummm... go huntin' or.. play tag?  

He remembered playing chase on the beach with his siblings, but never had a name ascribed to it. Hunting was obvious enough, and Ephraim was terrible at that game. He remembered the mouse escaping from him in the meadows just prior to encountering Grezig, and it was enough to make his lips tighten at the corners. No, maybe not that game. Tux would beat him and he wasn't a gracious loser.

So he asked, instead, "wha's tag?" If it sounded worse than hunting, he supposed he would have to suck it up, but if not, well... they had their game picked!

tag ess when you..  he tilted his head and pointed his eyes to the sky, his little brows furrowed together as he tried to come up with the words for tag.  ultimately, he failed.  he was, ah, not the brightest bulb in the box.  

instead he surged forward onto his legs and waddled over to the boy (who was very obviously going to beat him), and stuck out one of his fat legs to touch him, if it was allowed.  then he waddled back to where he was sitting.  and then you'd, um, come tag me.

Turns out tag was harder to explain than to demonstrate. Ephraim would run into the same conundrum if he tried to explain some of his own games from Grimnismal, but he could hardly think of them to mention. The black-and-white boy opted instead to show him, eliciting a flinch from Ephraim, who wasn't expecting the tap. It didn't hurt though and he chuckled at his own nervousness. Seemed fun. He could get behind it.

As Tux drew his foot away, Ephraim's eyes locked onto his toes, and suddenly the notion of tag was momentarily put aside. For you see, Tux had a toe that Ephraim didn't have. The little coywolf confirmed it by glancing between his foot and Tux's, and couldn't stop himself from asking, rather insensitively, "wha's that toe do?"

He was lucky enough that he had never felt really out of place in Drageda that Ephraim's question did not make him self-conscious.  In fact, he was quite proud of his toes!  Early on he had realized he had more toes than any of his siblings, so his first instinct had been to ask nomi, of course. She had told him then, just as she had told Wildfire when he had been born, that It's my fast toe, it makes me go fast.  He held up one of his feet that had too many toes, and gave the boy another gentle tap.  It's also for taggin'.

It's my fast toe. Whaaaat. Ephraim peered more closely at Tux's extra toe, never noticing that all of his feet had additional digits. It didn't seem any different from the rest of his toes and the possibility that Tux was lying to him clamoured in his head, but he decided at length that it was probably true. And if it was: no fair! How did Tux come by it?

"Can I ge' one?" he wondered, even as Tux tapped him on the shoulder and declared it was for tagging. Ephraim snorted, his gums pulling up into a competitive smile. "If I win can you show me where ta ge' one?" he wondered, dropping his chest to the ground and letting his rump stick up in the classic invitation to play.

Ephraim had a way of asking questions that Tux did not know how to answer.  He looked to the boy, then to his own feet, and then down at the Eyjolfur's toes.  I... dunno, he says slowly, brow furrowing.  None of his siblings had a fast toe, nomi and mama didn't have a fast toe... and he was sure that if they could have one, they would want one too!  I was borned with my fast toe, he explains a little more clearly, so's, I dunno.  Maybe ask nomi?