Hideaway Strath i live inside my own heart, matt damon

Most days, Mallaidh resembles a swollen belly with attached legs that aren’t quite able to keep up. They are wobbly, at best, and uncoordinated to boot. However, it does not stop her from trying to make use of them and find her perimeter within the den. Her vision has cleared up significantly and she’s able to differentiate now by faces and she’s fine tuning her ability to read expressions. In addition, her hearing has sharpened from vibrations to hushed mumbles, to words and accents and languages that she doesn’t have the comprehension for but they are a pleasant experience to listen to.
 
The sun sweeps in the opening of the den where she’s taken a liking to when she can for a few minutes at a time. She is often swept back into her mother’s clutch but it is harder and harder to keep the growing girl still. She’s mumbling words of incoherence, half speaking in a tongue only God can understand, but each syllable and sound makes complete sense to her. Mallaidh follows it with a series of sharp barks, turning her head sideways and swatting at something crawling toward her with terrible inaccuracy.

Terrible inaccuracy notwithstanding, Mallaidh’s tiny paw connects with something warm and wet — Eirlys’ wide open, yawning mouth. The snowdrop, recovered from her hypoglycemic episode and just as bright-eyed as the rest of her siblings, has already learned that her dark-furred sister is the life of the Lotturo party. Eirlys taken to following her family members around like a duckling; she isn’t an adventurer as much as an accomplice. Her clumsy little mouth attempts to clamp down on her sister’s appendage, not with fierce little teeth but with curious lips and tongue. “Hi! You taste bad!” is probably the closest thing to what her expression suggests as she attempts abruptly to dislodge herself, all bright and slightly unfocused eyes and a happily wriggling hind end.

It comes as a surprise when her paw connects with her sisters face—her mouth—and her own eyes widen in surprise. It is not a sharp grip when she tries to free her limb, there are teeth involved, and she inhales a very shrill voice, holds it for a second, and then wails as long as she can. The expression Eiryls is lost as she stumbles back into the thickened fur of her mother and stiffens out all her legs, leans back, and kicks her legs straight up into the air dramatically. With her eyes closed, tongue out the side of her mouth, Mallaidh “dies.”