dog race

For all the babies? :o @Pasha @Swift @Whittier @Allure II - I'm going to race you.

As adorable and fuzzy as her potato babies were, they could only sustain the interest of an adult brain for so long. Well-wishers came and went, leaving Bazi with gifts and kind words that saw her through the endless hours spent sleeping, nursing, or cleaning up shit. She longed for her children's senses to develop - so that she could teach them something about the world. Feeding was an essential part of preparing the foursome for life, of course, but it was a very passive activity - and something they had come out of the womb pre-prepared to do. In their two days on earth, the pups had learned nothing that would help them in, say, a hunt. Or a bear fight.

That morning, Bazi hatched a misguided idea. Before the pups could latch on for their morning feed, she shifted them to the opposite wall of the den and plucked a dark strip of meat from her pile of presents. It was on its way out, and smelled strongly of meat and very, very slightly of decomposition. Perfect.

Bazi stepped across the skins and straw, dangling the prize in front of her children's blind faces. "Smell that? Smell that, babies?" she cooed, aware that they couldn't hear a word of it. Bazi took one small step back across the padded den floor - the smell moved with her. "Come on - follow! Follow!"

STUBBORN MODE ENGAGED.

Bundled together with his siblings, Pasha had been enjoy the same sensations of the previous days — warmth and food. And when the absence of one of those sensations had left him for what felt like a length, he had stirred from the depths of rest to present reality. Something was amiss.

He rooted around, pushing and prodding those around him silently at first, but growing noisy steadily. He shoved a face out of his way, whoever it belonged to did not occur nor matter to him. The biggest source of warmth was missing, and he called out for it.

Pasha was having none of it. A dissatisfied noise built in the baby's throat as he rooted around amongst the other little bodies, pressing his pug nose against each one and confirming - with three distinct increases in volume - that none of them were Big Warm and the Boobies.

Bazi looked at him with no small amount of exasperation, but was forced to shuffle closer. The pups were unable to regulate their own body temperature, and she could not imagine what she would say to Scimitar if her boredom killed their children.

"This way, " she cooed an inch or so in front of Pasha's face, breathing a stream of hot air over him. The strip of meat dropped on his head.

That morning began just like any other - or at least, it probably did. Hell if Whit had any idea considering it was his, what, second morning ever? The pale meatball began the day with a wide yawn-like gaping of his mouth and a long stretch-like manuever of his pudgy, midget legs. The necessities out of the way, he immediately turned his head to search for the squishy boob wall, intent on suckling and puking and peeing the day away.

But then it all went so horribly, terribly wrong when boob wall made a break for it.

Whittier thrust his nose back and forth, searching blindly for his breakfast. He whimpered nervously when he was unable to find it - a sound that cased the moment he wriggled about and smashed his face right into his brother's rump. Deciding that he perhaps just didn't have the right elevation for his search, the little wolf decided to climb Mount Swift, only to tumble right back off the moment he'd reached the top of the summit 'cause.. y'know, gravity.

The little chubster rolled unceremoniously to a halt, bopping lightly against Pasha. Frustrated, he jerked his body about, unwittingly facing his mother and the strip of decaying meat she'd just dropped upon her eldest. Instantly, the boy froze, mesmerized by the new scent. He held his mouth open, hovering just a centimeter in front of the meat, tasting the scent that spilled from it with his tongue but unable to react... except to suddenly soil himself with a rumbly little purr.

Swift was in a deep, dreamless sleep, and had not yet awoken for breakfast. He did not even awake when Pasha shoved his face, although it started his ascent into wakefulness. The temperature shift of his mother's absence also stirred him, but he did not fully wake until Whittier clambored over his back, digging his paws in and tugging Swift's loose puppy skin every which way. He announced he was awake with a two squeaks in quick succession. His little legs dragged him until his nose was met with novel scent, which he responded to first with a rrrrrr... before instinct caused him to cease his growling and sniff, bobbing his head as he did so.

Filler post from me, so that babies have something to react to. :D Still Pash-Ku's turn.

Allure slept on, but the other two were roused by the sudden flurry of activity and new smells. Within seconds, Whittier had established himself at the top of the troublemaking charts - a position he had thus far occupied for 100% of his life. Whilst Swift responded to the new scent with the correct mixture of caution and curiosity, Whittier made communicated his thoughts on the matter by emptying his bowels. "So you like it, then," Bazi rumbled fondly (yes, fondly, despite the fact that her son's poop was both loose and very smelly), nudging the offender's rump out of the way so that she could pull the ruined straw out from under him with her teeth. With the area more or less sanitized, she waited to see what the three boys would do with Pasha's meat hat.

I completely suck, sorry! :C

Something landed on his head and for a moment, he thought it was that Thing of Warmth and Comfort. But it was no such thing, it was not a tongue that caressed the crown of his little head and soothed him. It was something else, something so foreign to him that he didn't know how to respond to it even when the smell of something else came to him. But his interest in that scent overtook all over things soon enough, even when his siblings were crawling about. With his head bobbing, Pasha squeaked once in frustration when he could not entirely ascertain where that scent was directly coming from, or why. He wanted to investigate it closer, yet could not get his little meat hat to shift somewhere else.

I feel like it's my turn... but that might not actually be true?

Whit accepted his mother's nosing about at him with a surprising amount of patience.  He was too intrigued by the smell of meat - a scent that sang to him like a siren.  He didn't have the teeth to be able to tear into it, nor the mental capacity to really even understand what it was exactly.  All the pudgy boy knew was that it smelled hella good and he wanted to gnaw on it.

Unaware that his brother was trying to dislodge the meat from his head, Whit scrambled closer to it.  He didn't stop until his front paws were pressed firmly upon the edge of meat that rested upon the floor of the den.  Turning his head to try out different awkward angles of attack, the boy began to suckle at the warm flesh, savoring the unusual but delightful flavor.

i don't even care any more, i'll reply to this still lmfao

Perhaps this was the point in time where Pasha would vaguely learn what it was like to be smothered. Not quite to the point where suffocation came into play, but close enough. He felt swarmed in a matter of moments, though in reality it was probably a good few seconds longer than a firm instant.

And he was poked and prodded, crawled upon and over and if it were possible, maybe even someone was trying to roll him weakly. A nose went into his eye at some point and he didn't know who to blame (or how to) and just squeaked defensive and surprised, trying to crane his little head back away from the oncoming assault.

Then Whitter steamrolled over part of him, after that aggravating piece of meat that Pasha could not entirely figure out. He pushed his head into the curve of his brother's neck, trying to force the already roly-poly sibling away. Back off jack, it's mine.

OKAY I'MA GON' BE THAT GUY RIGHT NOW

Pasha was not overly pleased with Whitter's actions, which unfortunately (for him) did not deter the chubster in the slightest. With a growl and a bat to Pasha's face as a warning to stop it, Whit carried on wriggling forward, twisting himself so that he could use his big ol' bum like a medeival flail, knocking it against his brother's side to encourage him to bugger off while he suckled on the delicious meat hat.

The boys tussled rambunctiously for a little while, both struggling against each other for different purposed - Whit to continue to eat, and Pasha to find some peace and freedom from his unwanted apparel. Eventually, as Swift and Allure both decided to join the fray, Bazi intervened and separated them all to different sides of the slab of meat so that they could and explore and nibble without interference from one another until they all decided it was time to not be awake anymore and curled up for sleep one by one - Whittier at least with half of his front upon the meat so that he could snuggle his little face happily into the delicious gore.