Sun Mote Copse i'm cute about everything

@Sugar Glider <3

aengus didn’t really feel like he needed an invitation to go see weejay. he felt as though their connection warranted any means to reach her. of course, the young boy was not entirely bright in his attempts to seek out the girl. he had brought a mouthful of flowers with him – carried them through the bog – all while merrily humming a tune that he had conjured up in his boredom. the trek was almost worth it by the time he reached the scent of weejay’s pack. he was tired and a little winded from the jaunt, but not at all worse for wear.
 
poking around at the edge of the claim, aengus wandered in to their terrain and then back out. he sniffed in search of his sweet, flower-loving friend. nothing about having crossed their borders seemed strange to him. he had assumed that weejay had told her entire pack about how he was a friend and was welcome any time.
 
flowers still clutched tightly in his mouth, aengus lifted his head and barked happily into the trees. then, he found a shady place to wait and leaned back onto his thick haunches.

Anyone who knew her knew about Sugar's burgeoning passion for all things earthen. Her experience with the purple flower had put a damper on that, though even her brush with death couldn't quell her fascination for long. When invited to accompany an adult on a brief jaunt around the territory, Sugar couldn't resist the opportunity. She would just avoid going anywhere near any flowers, that was all.

That proved easier said than done, of course; the copse was in full summer bloom. Somehow, Sugar managed to give any and all purple blossoms a wide berth. Concentrating on this task saved her from experiencing her usual "whelmies" (as @Finley called them), as it kept her focus fairly narrow. Before she knew it, they were in a neck of the woods far from the rendezvous site, her escort commanding her to stay put before striding off to perform a cursory perimeter check.

She wasn't a willful child and planned to obey. She planted her hindquarters and peered at her surroundings, squinting at a patch of purplish wildflowers off in the distance. Sugar only moved because a bee drifted in her direction. She liked most insects, though she'd eaten a bee (a "spicy sky raisin," someone had called it) and it hadn't been pleasant, to put it mildly.

In her effort to avoid the bee, Sugar rose and trotted away a few yards. It came after her. The puppy snorted and moved again. When still it drifted along in her wake, she tried to outsmart it by breaking into a run. It worked wonderfully; the bee vanished behind her as Sugar darted unknowingly toward the borders.

The strong smell of urine made her slow, stop and realize what she'd done. Before Sugar could retrace her steps, she noticed a dark figure nearby. It wasn't her chaperone though. It was nobody she knew. She hadn't met many strangers in her life, though she wasn't fearful. She was a little bit aloof but also very curious. She noted that that the unfamiliar wolf most certainly wasn't an adult; he was only a pup, like her!

After a long while of studying him from afar, Sugar eventually called out, "Hey!" and then, "Who're you?" But she didn't move closer, not yet.

a voice sounded in the air and aengus spun around to where it had originated from with a wide smile and a flagging tail. he had thought the girl to be weejay for a moment, but when he finally got a decent shot at her, the young bull realized that this was not his friend. it was not his intention to appear disheartened by the appearance of sugar glider. she had called out to him, after all. this was a sign that she wasn’t going to run off and tattle that he was there, or so he hoped. the last thing he needed were his parents having to come collect him because weejay’s pack didn’t want him around their borders.
 
“i’m aengus frostfur,” the pudgy boy called back to her. he drew himself upward and trotted a few paces closer. there was still plenty of space between them, but he didn’t want to have to shout to her. when he saw her a little bit better, he noted that her coloration was very similar to weejay’s. for a moment, aengus thought this could have been a sibling to his flower-loving hippie friend. it would have been a fortunate meeting, if that were the case. still beaming from ear to ear, aengus leaned forward anxiously. “do you know weejay?” he asked in a loud whisper. then, his smile seemed to spread even further and crinkled at the edges of his vibrant gaze. “because you have the same colors that she does!”

Like her, he had two first names, or that's how she understood his introduction. This teased a shy smile from her, which bloomed fully when he mentioned her elder cousin by name. Sugar nodded, eyes tracking Aengus's movements as he came nearer. With every step closer, their difference in size became much more noticeable. She suddenly began to doubt if he was a pup, after all, though his smiling face was youthful. His orange eyes looked like a mix of her mother's brown and her father's gold, somehow.

"Weejay's my coz," Sugar replied, feeling a sense of camaraderie due to their mutual connection, as well as their sameness in age. That made her squint suddenly and ask, "Where's your big?" For that matter, where was hers? Sugar's ears tilted backward and before he could even answer, she admitted, "I runned away but it was a accident. The spicy sky rain was gonna bite me with its butt." Because whoever had nicknamed them that had also explained that danger to her.

alright, so he was a little overzealous, but it wasn’t every day that he met a family member to one of his dopest friends in the forest. at least, that was what he assumed her to be when she mentioned that she was weejay’s ‘coz.’ this was a term that he was completely unfamiliar with, but the pudgy boy wasn’t about to let on that he didn’t jive with her terminology. fuck it! he could pretend that he understood what she meant. he was hip. he was with-it. so, aengus nodded his head excitedly.
 
the girl asked where his ‘big’ was. the bull was big enough for the both of them, if they were going off of size alone. if she was asking about a particular person, well… aengus didn’t have a big in his life. “your nose is pink! i really like it,” aengus blurted out without anything to connect her questions to his statement. he was definitely missing a few marbles. besides, that was how kids talked anyway. there wasn’t always a defining subject to guide their remarks. “you wanna adventure?” another good example of how fragile his attention span was. he kinda wanted to know more about the spicy sky rain, though....

Rather than answer her question, he complimented her nose, which made Sugar go cross-eyed even as she scrunched it. She gave that up momentarily, offering her new pal a smile before remembering to say, "Thanks, I think," in a soft but bright voice.

Next he wanted to know if she wanted to adventure. Of course she wanted to say "yes," though Sugar instead found herself glancing over her shoulder, looking for any sign of her chaperone. She chewed on her lip for a moment before it suddenly occurred to her that she should try calling out. That's why wolves howled, after all, to locate one another. Right?

Demonstrating just as much of an attention deficit as her companion, Sugar did that, then looked to Aengus again. "What kinda adventure? Where?" she queried curiously. Then she thought to ask, "Did you know I'm a dragon?" The words made her flashback (quite literally) to her stormy duel with Fig.

aengus wished that he had a pink nose. he’d have rubbed that in his sister’s face until their dying day. it really stood out to him. most of the other wolves he’d met had standard inky black noses, and while this wasn’t all that original, was something that the young bull had grown used to. that coupled with the other markings that she had seemed to set her apart from a vast majority of the wolves that he had crossed paths with.
 
the question that he’d asked seemed to have brought a questioning expression to her face. she glanced over her shoulder before looking back to him and inquiring about where they would be going on this grand escapade. he beamed at her, tail wagging. “anywhere! i’ll keep you safe,” aengus vowed to his pink-nosed friend.
 
she claimed that she was a dragon and the young bull lowered his torso to the earth with a gaping mouth. “whoa! can you breathe fire??” his question was awe-filled.

He promised to keep her safe and Sugar responded with a toothy smile, glad for the sentiment. He certainly looked like he was capable of it. Still, she probably wouldn't go off anywhere until she had the proper permissions. She was a good kid like that.

"Aye!" she declared with quiet emphasis when Aengus asked her about breathing fire. Now her grin was no less toothsome, yet also playfully leering. "I can fly too!"

"There you are!" came a slightly exasperated voice from somewhere behind Sugar, causing the little would-be dragon to spin on a heel. Finley shuffled toward her. She didn't look too upset, probably because she knew Sugar Glider was an obedient child who would never run off on purpose. She did give Aengus a bit of a skeptical eyebrow raise as she queried, "And who's this?"

"I got almost got bitsed by a spicy sky raisin," Sugar told her mother, even though she hadn't required an explanation. "This is Aengus!" she chirped in the next breath, grinning once more at her new friend. "Can we go on a adventure, Finley?"

Tagging @Finley for reference—happy to change anything in this post if needs be!