Swiftcurrent Creek the light goes out, my heart goes still and just like that, i believe in ghosts

sorry for the brevity huehueheu @Wylla 

it was late in the night when a grumbly in Tiercel’s tumbly roused her from sleep.  curled up in the tilde of Wylla’s hip with her mouth popped on one of her teats (security blanket who? she had a security boob), she startled awake as the loud grrrrrrrow trundled through her belly. prying her gob off her mom, Tiercel looked pointedly and disapprovingly at her stomach, then towards the moonlit threshold that led out to the crepuscular glade. she knew she wasn’t allowed to go outside by herself at night or there’d be a lecture to the tune of “take one step outside that door and it’s all over”, but what options did she have? 

the girl looked back to the slow rising and falling form of her mother and squirmed anxiously, trying to the wring the urge to go out of her body--but she reaaaaallly needed to! and using their immaculate sleeping quarters as a lavatory was an offense worse than just slipping outside for a second to take care of things. given that whole “lesser of two evils” principle of yore, who could really argue with her rationale?  

carefully considering the option most likely to lead to the most desirable outcome for her (chiefly, remaining un-yelled at), the child lifted her head to peek over her mother’s elbow, peering down to appraise the extent of her consciousness. her stomach rolled again and Tiercel drew herself tense, suddenly aware that conditions were escalating into “potential incident” territory. damn her hedonism. damn midnight snacks. damn the snack bar for being so readily available. she couldn’t hold over until morning, much less five minutes, so she galumphed into action, pulling from the safety of the holt to greet the moon with wide-eyed wonder. her paws made tentative, practiced steps into the spill of moonshine, carting her quietly across the clearing and over to the throng of trees that marked her boundary for exploration. 

minding this perimeter with utmost obedience, she assumed the position, a sleepy yawn splitting her jaws as she did so, when--hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo; a voice materialized from somewhere in the darkness. smoky ears joined swiftly together and her eyes writ large as she scanned the dark for the commentator, tail clinging like a lichen on a rock against her undersides. hoo-hoo-hooooo boy, wasn’t that fun? it would sure be a whole lot more fun if mom was around. Tiercel was quick to defect from the choice she’d made to revolutionize the conditions under which her freedom was set, tumbling back into the den and diving under Wylla’s armpit with a squeal, legs striving to press her as closely into the security of her warden's embrace as possible.  

and damn it, the urge to go was still accounted for.

God damnit, was her first waking thought as a gentle tug on her nip signalled Tiercel's departure. She wished she could rise bright and sunny in the mornings, but her awakening was something much more like Frankenstein's monster coming to consciousness; a spasm wracked her body and her eyes, gummy with sleep, cracked open and immediately shut again as her face inverted itself with displeasure. She laid there for some time, ignorant to Tiercel's careful inspection and decision to break the rules, before with a groaning and popping of her joins, she rolled laboriously to her stomach and blinked half-lidded at the moonlit entry.

There was nothing bright and shiny about that grouchy morning face. It was clear she hadn't slept well in days, constantly disrupted by Tiercel's need to have a teat crammed into her greedy mouth all night long and her own ignorance on how to make her child less dependent on her without just cutting off her own tits. Beauty sleep had lost its title quite some time ago. You'll be beautiful if you kill yourself was a more frequent component of her late night musing than just getting a solid eight hours to be fresh for the next day, and occasionally kill the kid snuck in there, too.

Determined to do the latter tonight, the mottled sterling she-wolf prepared to drag her bone-weary body up when suddenly her rebellious offspring came flying back into the den and jammed herself right into her pit. "Ow," she grumbled, "the fuck, child?" With a sharp nip to the rump, she sought to remove Tiercel from her hide-y hole. "If you're gonna break the rules you gotta face the consequences, all right," she decreed, half-joking and not-at-all-amused. "It's not my fault if you become owl food because you can't follow simple instructions, yeah?" Cue a gentle shove meant to freak Tiercel out, reminiscent of being seven years old while your dad locked the car doors and pretended to drive away without you. "Get your ass out there and face your destiny."

wylla waking up like https://cs8.pikabu.ru/post_img/2017/11/1...527785.gif

as soon as her mother made noise, Tiercel weaseled deeper into her chest and tucked her head into aromatic armpit fur, looking altogether pitiful as her rump stuck out all splayfooted and rotund.

the nip on her most vulnerable asset spurred her forward, at least insofar that her behind was disenthralled from the range of teeth and their pinching. her ears drooped in a measly display of woe--although she did not understand the directive in spoken word, the goading shove that sought to deploy her as a one-man army against the owl militia was clear enough in and of itself. 

her claws clung to the earth, every fiber of her being resisting the return to a life of crime. but… she did still have to go, and mother wasn’t giving any indication that she would be escorting her delinquent to the yard. and when duty calls, you better hope it doesn’t leave a voicemail. 

she crept ever-so-slowly to the threshold, one little foot extending across the eclipse of overshadow and into the starlight, followed by the rest, until she was vulnerably poised outside the den. paranoia clenched her—she was the melt-in-your-mouth cynosure of eyes belonging to one thousand eldritch horrors. lifting her leg to take another step and, hoo… hooo, Tiercel froze and a thin stream of pee ran down her leg and into the dimness of the den.

She watched with eyes half-lidded with quiet amusement as Tiercel crept back out into the night. The girl only made it halfway before the owl hooted again, and the pungent scent of urine smacked Wylla in the nose. "Ugh," she exclaimed, pushing herself up and sweeping toward the den entrance. "Seriously, child, are you a mouse or are you a wolf?" Tiercel was doing a very convincing impression of prey. Owls didn't eat wolves, duh.

So says Wylla, with all her very official made up expertise.

"Get out," she grumbled, giving her daughter's damp rump a butt with her muzzle. "Learn to hold your ground and you'll be fine." She sounded uncaring, as she always did, taking cues from her own mother—not a good idea, hindsight would be 20/20 on this—but she wasn't about to let her only daughter be eaten by an owl. Her application for motherhood had discerned her questionable quality for the job, but she'd been chosen for it anyway. She would keep Tiercel alive. She couldn't promise much else. So she hovered near, attempting to reassure Tiercel that she wasn't going to become the content of an owl's pellets.