Blackfeather Woods the eye wide open

The pup stirred awake beside those who were able to sleep more soundly that night. He pawed at his snout. His gums were sore with the eruption of his first set of teeth. It was another discomfort to add to the frequent pinch and burn in his gut.

Euron glanced around. There was a bright glow bathing the den entrance. One he had not seen before and he was not accustomed to there being light at all in the dead of night. He stared at length before rising on to his silver-toed paws. The pup kept his shoulder tight to the den wall and crept forward to peek outside the den, his nose just parting the concealing vines enough that he could behold the source of the light. The full moon.

To his yet-developing eye sight not much else existed out there than the entrancing sphere. It held his gaze for a long time before he remembered to blink. Something about the moon both drew him and sent a chill up his lengthening spine. He wanted to get nearer but he also felt he should pull back. Rather than either, Euron found himself rooted where he was. He stared at the moon and absently chewed a small vine that had been tickling the side of his mouth.

Euron and Maegi were growing longer by the day. Ramsay was growing longer too, but due to the nature of his body, the disparity between him and his siblings was becoming more obvious. He didn't notice it and his siblings didn't seem to notice it yet either, but every grown wolf around him surely did. In spite of his deformity, Ramsay tackled the world with a huge amount of gusto, dispelling any myths that he was sickly in addition to being a freak of nature physically.

Tonight was no different. Ramsay was sound asleep until Euron moved away, resulting in his head lightly bopping the ground below. Startling awake, the pup peered in confusion around the bleary den until his vision lit upon the very thing Euron had seen: a bright silvern light from beyond. If not for his own mouth full of discomfort, Ramsay might have drifted back to sleep, but instead the dwarf rose to his paws with an awkward hop and a disgruntled sound and headed toward his brother's blurry behind.

Unlike Euron, he proceeded with almost no caution whatsoever. Ramsay barreled straight through the center of the den, stumbling over his paws with every other step, and bowled right into his mottled sibling's back with a whumpf of air. Without any hesitation, the stunted pup scrambled up with the aid of full length limbs until his snout was near enough for him to clasp Euron's flap of ear and begin gnawing on it. Without a proper neck, he couldn't reach for it like a normal pup with his hindpaws on the ground, so settled with draping himself along Euron's upper back with his forelimbs hooked over his brother's shoulders and the rest of his short body dangling.

Euron's ears twitched reflexively to the muffled sound of his brother approaching. There was no stealth to Ramsay yet, if ever there would be. Euron was developing a soft step and a grace that would seem more befitting of his sister, and where his brother was bold and brazen he was a more cautious and furtive sort.

Ramsay piled into him and Euron uttered a surprised grunt as he shoved forward, too attentive to the moon to brace for any sort of sibling collision. Before he could gather his senses back from the moon's grasp, Ramsay was scrabbling atop him and latching on to his ear. He hung on Euron like an eccentric backpack from Hot Topic. Not content to just sit there and be accessorized and chewed on, the pup flopped over on his side, dislodging his brother enough that he could slip Ramsay's grasp and regain his footing.

The moon was forgotten. His littermate had his attention now. With the black tip of his tail stretched out behind him, Euron wriggled like a cat and then pounced forward. He bounced a paw off his brother's nose and then moved in with open jaws to nip at Ramsay's face.

Cause and effect were still such abstract concepts to Ramsay, he wasn't expecting retaliation. Between the time he got hold of his brother's ear and Euron's reaction, Ramsay had already moved on to other thoughts. His dark blue eyes rolled up to the bright orb suspended above them and he inadvertently began to drool, his chewing slowing until it stopped entirely. He cooed out a notification for Euron—

—and was immediately flung to the ground by the rolling momentum of his stronger sibling.

With a cry, the boy struggled to his feet with a frog-like hop, then had to swing his whole body around just to face his sibling. Euron had already launched his counter attack; Ramsay finished his turn in time to receive an immediate smack to the snout, following by the pinch of crowning teeth on his cheek. Neither boy had enough force to do too much damage, but the change from harmless gums to sharp needles came as a shock to Ramsay, who froze in place and whimpered his confusion.

He recovered quickly enough from the shock, opting for shoving his hunched shoulders and head forward with a clumsy waddle and a breathy pant in hopes of dislodging his patchwork brother's hold on his face.

Euron was not too determined to maintain a grip on his brother's cheek. It was all play and he sought nothing more than entertainment. He allowed himself to be rolled easily to the side as Ramsay shoved forward, releasing the dark fur and flesh he had pinched between his little teeth. Euron squirmed and wriggled on the ground, uttering breathy and playful grunts, as he flipped over on his back to softly bat at his brother's snout some more.

Ramsay's feeling of triumph when Euron went down was short-lived. He took several moments to jaw spar with his sibling's paws, but his attention was soon nabbed by something else: a shadow wheeling across the bright disc in the sky. At first he paid it little mind, preferring his game of huffing and growling and trying to nab a wayward foot between his milk teeth, but his eyes were drawn upward slowly, and soon his motion stopped.

"Oooooo," Ramsay deafly gurgled, pushing away from Euron to bark up at the fluttery form high overhead.

Ramsay's distraction became his own. When his brother disengaged, Euron's snout tipped up so that his eyes could see what it was that had stolen the dark sibling's attention from him. He saw the bird too, and marked its path as it soared over the tree tops. It had a throaty call that made his ears perk.

He was struck by a sudden twinge of hunger. Imperceptible perhaps to sibling, Euron's expression sharpened into something more... predatory. He started to follow after the bird, eyes locked overhead as his legs tried to eat the ground the way the bird's wing beats could. It was a futile effort that would have ended as soon as it began had the bird kept a straight path, but something caught its attention and it banked. It dropped height as it came back around, and passed in front of Euron below the canopy — it was still well beyond the reach of any wolf yet somehow the pup imagined it was right there and lurched forward, jaws open.

His teeth closed on the enduring leaf of a sapling. It was dry, brown, and should have fallen already. Instead, it crunched and crackled and turned to airy pieces that tickled Euron's tongue and the back of his throat. The pup started to splutter and cough, his face wrinkled.

Ramsay's eyes darted in time with the raven's wings, but unlike Euron, he wasn't completely engrossed in it. His small ears couldn't pick up its quorking call, or much of anything for that matter. His brother pushed away from him and began to follow the flier's movements, while Ramsay himself sunk back on his haunches and awkwardly lifted a leg to scrub his wet muzzle against the inner crook of his arm. It wasn't long before he entirely lose interest in the bird and began to seek adventure in other places, turning away from bird and brother to toddle off toward a large lump on the ground.

With his eyes off his brother, he didn't notice Euron's misadventure with the leaf, and he was deaf to the spluttering sound that burst from his sibling's mouth as well. He was aware of only what was in his immediate line of sight, which no longer included Euron, and he hadn't developed the attachment to his siblings that his younger brother had. Ramsay often forgot they existed, much like now. The neckless pup sniffed at the tip of the rock as best he could, bending at the elbows to compensate for an inability to lower his head, and then he pressed his shoulder against its side and slid his body along it until he flopped over on the ground. He pushed his paws against the rock's cool surface and momentarily flexed his limbs, then immediately drifted into a light sleep, still heedless of his sibling's plight.

By the time he recovered from the leaf's attack on his throat, the raven had gone and he had forgotten what he had been doing anyway. Padding back along his own trail, he soon started on to Ramsay's track and followed his nose to where his brother slept by the stone. It was the middle of the night. He was tired. Sleep was a good idea now that he had investigated the moon, followed a raven, and choked on a dry leaf.

Euron lowered himself down, curling into a ball and pressing close against his littermate's spine. But the air was cold and his brother was simply not enough warmth. He was soon back on his feet, whimpering about his sore mouth and overall discomfort. Fortunately, for them both, another packmate was awake that night and heard the boy. They were soon placed back where they belonged in the den, safe from predators and from the cold bite of autumn.