Northstar Vale not with a bang, but with a whimper

As time dragged on and Sable Redhawk developed cognition, he became aware of many things.

Vibrating in the air from sound. The touch of his mother’s tongue across his crown. The warmth he leeched from his sister. He was unaware in all of this that he’d yet to make a sound, nor had Towhee Jr.

Today that changed.

In the early hours of afternoon, a rasping, wheezy whine left the neonatal boy. He’d gotten turned around in his nosing, and ended up far from the warmth of Towhee and Towhee Jr.

It was there, in the cold, that he learned loneliness, if only for a second

roman, his voice a worried rasp.

he quickly moved to pluck the child up. bring him forth to his own side for a moment. you are too young to wander. it will come sooner than you know it.

he roved his nose softly down his son's back.

A vibration, and then the feeling of gentle teeth. An oxymoron, though Sable did not known this yet. Sable did not know many things.

But, if there was one thing he did know, it was the familiar warmth of family. He settled at the side of his father, and in response to his nosing, gentle touch, the boy would respond with a raspy mewl, barely above a whisper, but supremely talkative for the boy who didn’t talk much.

this was a silent batch of children, he had come to learn. he wondered if perhaps they had somehow inherited it in a way. did one born with deafness know to make sounds? perhaps roman was deaf.

or perhaps they only sought to give tired, mourning parents a break with their arrival.

he ceased his nosing for a moment. then rumbled back low and warm. he wondered if he might coax roman to make the sound some more.

It was a curious thing, the vibration. He’d felt it fair few times in the days he’d been alive and breathing, listening as well as he could as his ears began their slow ascent.

But, for now, he was little more than blind and deaf, listening to the vibrations and trying to figure out how they worked. He nosed his way into the dirt, flailing fat little puppy paddles in an effort to somehow swim closer to the hum he could feel through the earth.

He tried to copy it after a moment, hoping to coax it to continue. Of course, his version was nothing more than the quick, buzzing hum of a beetle’s wing in comparison. It was the remix.

a small sound. a gentle buzz back, unmistakably from his son. he wondered if sasha too already rumbled like this. if firsts were being made. a thought that had him nearly yanking @Towhee over.

yet he also feared that he might ruin this moment if he dared to turn his attention elsewhere!

so he carefully, hush rumbled again as his tail softly thumped at the earth. careful in the way he pulled roman close to his chest.

His buzzing done, the boy rooted closer to his father, opening his mouth to gum experimentally on a piece of him. Committing the scent of him, of the outside, of the cold wind and coming spring to his greedy memory.

After a moment, a piece of fur tickled his tiny nose a bit too much. Sable stopped breathing, holding his breath as his chest expanded, then let out the babiest of sneezes, though quieted.