Stone Circle caleb meyer lived alone in them hollering pines

AW - 25 days — 2 months: Socialization
Pups will begin to appear outside the den and can be found near the den entrance. This is the time when the pack will begin interacting with the pups.

 riley landed with a heavy thump, a mushroom cloud of dust rising around his ungainly paws. in a clumsy lurch, the dark puppy inspected under his curled paws. under one dark calloused paw pad, about a thousand little legs squirmed and slowly stilled. the decomposer's pronged head had been thoroughly quashed, and a greenish grey liquid thickly bubbled from its broken exoskeleton.

truthfully, the impact had been a happy accident. had the centipede zagged instead of zigged, he would have easily eluded the artlessly stalking puppy.. but he didn't. instead, life as he knew it was swiftly ended, all by the cutest little murderer in teekon history.

riley lifted his paw and nosed the crushed bug; it curled and writhed against the wet touch of his inquisitive nose. without even considering any sort of detrimental side-effect, riley scarfed the bug, one hundred odd legs and all, and then thoughtfully licked the stone floor where the bug had met its untimely end.

Things had changed drastically in the span of a single year. Piper could hardly believe that she had found herself having been a part of three different packs in that timeframe and had endured a length of time as a loner in between. She still didn’t know how well she liked Easthollow, but she knew that there was family there – family she’d never even met before. She also knew that her mom and aunt were there. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, they were the most important things to her.
 
With that, she felt that it was important for her to get to know her newest siblings. Don’t get her wrong, she was pretty fucking salty that they had just come and been popped out in the time that it had taken her to leave Diaspora and find Easthollow. Laurel had some stories to tell, but Piper held onto that for a later time.
 
As she approached the family den, she noticed one of the dark boys was playing outside of it. The Redleaf girl froze in her place for a moment, wondering how she was supposed to talk to a child. She had been a god damn child a year ago! How could she have forgotten how to communicate with the small and round? Inching forward, she lowered her head a bit and offered a sugary smile. “Hey, you’re Riley aren’t you? I’m kinda your cool older sister Piper. You looking for bugs?”

on examination, the bug did not taste like much. it had a sour tinge to it, mixed with sediment and dirt. riley's tongue poked out between little milk-white teeth as he looked up, having been alerted belatedly to piper's presence as her shadow fell across him.

his ears flopped, unable to stand up on their own -- even less able to stand muster any time his head move abruptly. he fixed piper with a squint, his left eye traveling - she looked a bit like caretaker that was not his mother, except her features were softer. forgetting about the half-consumed centipede, riley bounded up towards piper and aimed a rough nip right on her nose.

The child did not seem as though he was all that interested in Piper. His loss, she supposed, because she was – hands down – the coolest mother fucker in that pack. When Riley turned to her with a sharp expression, she did not anticipate that he would lunge for her. Teeth like needles scored against her nose and the velvet of her muzzle. The Redleaf woman pulled her head back and curled her lip instinctively. A rumble sounded from within her throat, but she swallowed it back.
 
“You don’t do that,” Piper told him sternly. Her shimmering eyes were alight with fire as she stared at the young boy. Laurel hadn’t raised her and her siblings in that way. She did not recall ever attempting to bite someone. Perhaps, her mother had taught them to be wary of strangers. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to fly with Piper.

riley was not thinking of what he should or should not do. he had sensed an instinct in him commanding it, and he had followed it. in some ways the boy was reptilian in that regard: do, but do not think.

he landed rather awkwardly. in a previous life, he had been agile and fearsome. in this life, he was a rolly-polly fat jellybean. he lacked grace in the same way an amoeba did. he blinked up at the red caretaker stupidly, his mind and actions sluggish.

The boy recoiled a bit, tumbling back onto his plump rear-end. Piper watched him carefully – brows furrowed into a tight knot – with a thin-lipped expression. Riley did not seem to cry out against her. This caused the young Redleaf girl to wonder if he was fully there, you know, like in his head. There was a good chance that because the children had been popped out in the wilderness that he was missing more than a few braincells.
 
“You okay?” Piper asked him softly. Her expression softened and she leaned forward to sniff at the top of his head. There was a moment of pause before she offered an affectionate kiss to the soft puppy fur of his crown.

was he okay?

honest answer posed in the form of a question: is a bug that has a cinderblock dropped on it okay?

as piper leaned over to give him a kiss, riley recognized the motion as an advance -- albeit sluggishly. his mother usually did so when it was time to bathe, and he was not a willing baths-man. his neck scrunched right up into his spine as he turtled instinctively, his ears flat and groggy, frog-like eyes flat with malcontent: "mmnyah," the reptilian child objected, his head practically inside his shoulders as he lost balance and then toppled over with little toe-beans outstretched in defiance.

The woman watched as her younger brother recoiled into himself, scrunching up the bundles of excess flesh and fur around his neck like a ring of really gross foreskin. Piper frowned softly, wondering what the fuck was wrong with the kid. The noise that sounded from his small frame did nothing to ease her mind. The wildfire woman continued to squint at the boy, hoping that she hadn’t disrupted the formation of his braincells or something. It wouldn’t have shocked her if a kiss to the top of his head was enough to rattle his common sense loose.
 
Lowering her entire frame to the earth, Piper placed herself on a more visually appealing level for someone so small. Her shimmering golden gaze seemed to drink up his tiny features. She was surprised at just how dark the boys were. It reminded her of Wyatt, but she was quick to chase that thought away. It had been a long time since she’d seen her other brother… she imagined it would be a lot longer before she’d see him again.
 
Inhaling, Piper puffed out a soft breeze toward Riley and waited to see how he might respond.

objection: cute puppy and foreskin, do not belong in the same sentence.

scrunched up as he was, there was no avoiding that kiss -- but it was not taken without grunts of, well, disgruntlement. riley's flat gaze flicked up to his older sibling, distrust and distaste writ clear across their reflective surface. he had been slow to react, but now that he recognized piper as a threat, he would be ready if she came again to slay him with any more unwanted kisses.

prepared as he was for an aerial assault, he was not prepared for a terestrial one -- least of all in the form of a waft of seeping breath cast over him. he blinked stupidly as his body registered the sensation. warmth. mist. the riffling of fur as her exhale passed through like the fine teeth of a comb. an itch in his ear, a burning sensation in his owlish eyes...

he snorted, taken aback entirely.

then that itch came again -- that damned, tickling itch in his ear. riley shook his head, his ears flapping to the side vigorously. that itch! that sensation! he hated it. his lazy eye focused on piper with newfound scrutiny: what else was she capable of summoning to flummox him?

piper amused the boy a while longer, but eventually grew tired of his stupidity sluggishness, and escorted him patiently back to laurel. riley eyed her mistrustfully as she receeded, and made plans to bother her the next time she came by.