Wheeling Gull Isle whispers sloth, through curls of smoke

@Everett and @Heda were increasing presences in accipitra’s life. 

already visions of her birth dam were fading, replaced by streaking memories no more opaque than the distant shimmering shore. 

accipitra jostled to the front of their makeshift den today, her milky eyes focused on the swimming vision of the blue world; her new blue world. 

behind her she heard her siblings and not-siblings — already their foreigness was bleeding away to something different. in time, she would never remember a point where they weren’t involved at all.

Ami had brought new playmates to them, new brothers and sisters, and they became little Simeon’s greatest fixation.

They were younger than him and smaller, too, so he treated them like Juju and not like Kai or Dee. Maybe in time they would wrestle and roughhouse, but for now, he sought them with gentle words and gentler paws.

He woke to find one resting in the den mouth and gazing out.

Simeon rose and stretched and picked his way around his sleeping siblings until he reached the little black shock of fur.

Heya,a kind smile curved his lips as he came up beside her, you lookin at th’ocean?

They appeared overnight.

Popping up out of the earth like saplings, or out of Ami like Mal, Simmy and Dinny. And Juju!

Ami and Papa say God creates everything! Pebbles and lizards and babies! Judah didn’t really care where they came from. He was too busy staring down at the sleeping littler things. His tiny black-tipped tail frisked with excitement as he nosed each one, smudging the tops of their heads with his tongue like he’d seen Ami and Papa do before to his siblings, as gentle and as patient as an ungainly one month old pup can be, which is to say, not at all. One. Two. Three.

He spies the fourth one- his sister- and scampers over to wet her temple. Then he squirms his way to Simmy’s side, his entire body shaking his brother with excitement.

Look Simmy! They are so small! Smaller even than him! Simmy and Mal were big brothers- but now he was big brother too!

tags for ref!

every waking moment, heda nursed multiple pups. her own birthbabies were growing, speaking; they did not need so much of her milk, which flowed liberally for the new island children. still, they were young, and heda feared her devotion to the newest might affect them.
and so she brought them in where she was able. 
she fed them in tandem, an older sibling with a younger, for she had at once thought of them all as hers. @Saint with @Dinah, accipitra with simeon, @Hierophant with @Malakai, judah with @Anathema. this was instinctive, for heda was still quite new to the ways of motherhood and lactation. 
this however ensured two types of nutrition was created by the young mother, a protein-laden blend to support the older pups as they developed their independence, the second with a fattier richness for the second brood.
heda also chewed meat for the pups ready, often cradling one or two of the infants at her breast while she regurgitated for the others, or chewed it into a paste.
sleep was not hers, nor caracal's any longer. only prayer, only murmuring, shifting babies from milk to arm to nest and back to her belly.
towhee had come and heda had almost fallen asleep at once upon greeting her, too tired to hardly speak but deeply grateful for her mother in law's presence.
god had given her eight children. as simeon and judah murmured and kissed their little siblings, heda's silver-smudged eyes opened with a fond and golden light. "you both are so gentle with them. they'll know you as their brothers, and brothers have things to teach."

Towhee spent the morning wading in a tide pool until she finally managed to catch a fish. She dropped the damn thing the instant her toes touched dry land again and took a slap to the teeth before Towhee straight-up punched the fish in its damn face. It shocked the fish long enough for her to grab it and run inland.

She had dropped off some mushrooms the evening before, which were now gone from the threshold of the den. Towhee smiled around her catch, popping her head inside just long enough to drop it at Heda’s feet before retreating to find more sustenance for Caracal’s mate.

As much as she’d like to just hang out and let eight puppies crawl all over her, Towhee was on a mission: make certain Heda didn’t suffer from milk fever, which could kill not only her but all eight of those innocent babies.

Cameo!

*cracks my drama-loving little knuckles*

There were new faces, new children, and Dinah did not like it. 
Mama and Daddy raised her to be kind, to be gentle, to be a figure of light and godliness and womanhood. And those were things she was good at. She rarely squabbled, gave her brothers the softness of femininity in the form of a sister with a voice of reason, listened to what Mama and Daddy told her to do. She was a good kid, really! 
Which was all the more reason for the darklings to cause her dismay. 
Around the clock, Mama and Daddy had been busy with them. Their eyes grew puffy, their voices scratchy with sleep deprivation. Most of her adventures were made by herself, unless someone noticed her absence. 
Seldom was she with her brothers alone, Mama alone, Daddy alone. Now, there were four more whining, soft mouths begging for food. They took food from Mama! Food that was hers once! 
She felt as though she had been forgotten. Mama and Daddy didn't love her anymore, or else they would not be fussing over these— these... demons. These thieves!  
Didn't they have their own parents? 
So every day, Dinah waited for them to disappear. For their real Mama to come get them, who never did. 
And she was nice to them; she would play along if Mama left her "in charge" of one, she would not yell or growl or swat at them. But she did not like them, and as time went on where they existed within her now shattered family, her eyes grew all the more dull. Dinah became withdrawn, quiet; she would sit on the beach or beneath an old spruce, away from the wandering eyes of her family, and cry there. She would, decidedly, not cry in front of the darklings. 
And that is where she was now. Her siblings were occupied with the little thieves, and so she had taken her leave on the shoreline, curled up in a little ball with her forepaws covering her eyes as she wept. 
For the first time in Dinah's short life, she felt alone. 

so many new faces to learn, when accipitra’s eyes were so small they could barely behold them. shadows and movement flit the edge of her vision as one would-be sibling left the den. 

the others jostled around her. she was faintly aware of her surrogate dam somewhere behind her. two faces swam into view, larger than those of her siblings — their dinnerplate eyes leaving trails of cometdust in her vision. 

accipitra knew little of the words Simeon spoke, but her head snapped up to peer at his aerial face, a coo bursting from her little lips as he and Judah’s visages swam together.

The new litter of children were sudden to come into their family's lives. One moment they were not there and the next, they were, being carried into the den as though it were now their own, too. Being so very young, Malakai had first assumed they were their own siblings, birthed by mother all the same. How could he have known any better? Though with Malakai's growth, came his listening skills and his understanding of the words given. It wasn't until it was said that he realized something was different with these pups and had come from another land entirely. They had smelt different, surely. The words shared by the adults forced Kai put two and two together. Even now, as Heda speaks: "They will know you as brother."  

@Dinah was not alone in her thoughts. Like Dinah, he kept silent of them, though perhaps did less well in hiding his feelings then she. Even now, as Simeon and Judah made to comfort their little sibling, Kai only watched them with a hardened scowl. Malakai had been far too young to understand or even notice the wear and tear of his parents when they were born, nursing at their mother's side. Right when the young parents felt they were getting past the hard parts, double the pups was presented, forcing them to start all over again. 

When feeding, the competition was fierce. Whenever Kai would drink from their mother, he would now push and shove his younger siblings far harder then he had with his littermates- likely so only because he was larger and stronger now. However, he was far more likely to try and eat the meat his mother gave him then nurse. The younger children forced him into progressing to meat quicker, if only because he did not wish to dine at their side. 

After some long moments of hard staring at the insufferable screeching one of the pups was making, Kai gets up and exits the den for a walk along the beach.