Noctisardor Bypass bury me inside this labyrinth bed

dissonance hangs heavy in the air of rivenwood, a proverbial burning of something that had meant to be sacred; but the sin in the air is as cloying and choking as a forest fire. justice clucks his tongue of disapproval, growling things in ezra's mind that is incoherent unwords. for justice, of course, it bound to the vessel of ezra and the pup, a little delayed in development is only now opening his eyes for the first time.

clear-eyed despite the inability to make out much more than shapes, ezra is stirred awake, discomfort sitting in his stomach like a rock.
the discomfort passes, settles. easily, he is both overwhelmed and fascinated by the indiscernible shapes he can blearily make out.

a small chirp is made, his mouth pressed against the shoulder of one of his unsiblings in his attempt to squirm away, to see what he can feebly see.

a chirp broke from the huddle of puppies. ava looked up with a swing of her long ears, straining to find the origin source. 

ezra. the boy cloaked in russet like his mama, eyes now open for the first time. ava held him in her shaky gaze, noting the starlit streaks around him seemed to thrum with the same baby blue of his eyes. he moved and the blue seemed to blur; a streaking rivulet running from each pair of eyes in her vision. 

she inched close, crawling on her belly and ignoring the dull ache this caused in the back of her skull.

the eyes of her sons were opening.
overjoyed to share this moment with ava, heda sent her daughter a delighted grin of genuine happiness, perhaps the first she had felt since the relief over the girls' return. "ezra, oh, ezra," she crooned toward the cloudy baby blues of her red-capped child.
a stirring of the small body in her own arms brought another excited sound — "look, ava!" heda exclaimed. baby @Gideon was blinking his own beautiful little eyes, adjusting them with low sounds of wonder to the light spilling through the dennmouth.
for a moment, the lovely sons seemed to look at one another, one smudged with scarlet, the other unique with two beating, lively tails as the pups brushed their noses together with steadying heads and soft babyish snufflings of surprise.
heda turned them both toward the sunlight, glancing for her older daughter with another near foolish, dazzled grin of wonder.
thank you for the works you have done

what ezra can see isn't much. if he had anything to compare it to: he would be horrendously disappointed. his vision was blotchy, still developing despite being outside the womb, nothing more discernible than simple shapes and fuzzy lines.

still, as this is a leaping step from the oil slick darkness he has known thus far, he is impressed.

something is drawing nearer! a large shape, larger than gideon and kikimora. larger than his unsiblings!

he is a little overwhelmed as he takes in his sister, not yet noticing his mother.

he blinks a few times, single-mindedly focused on ava, shuffling closer to her with a curious chirrup once the initial shock of such a bigger shape than him wore off.

ava looked into those ocean-blues, and was transported a million miles away.

they made her think of the stormy ocean; of the raw, unfixed power of each wave. unfocused but calamitous. uncaring.

but this thing was very much alive. she held his wobbly head in her shaky vision, noting the blurred edges of his face as he looked up to her. out of the corner of her eye she saw heda's face bright with happiness and heard her exclamation.

ava looked to gideon and noticed the same mixed blue; as she looked back to ezra, for a moment gideon's features persisted in her vision -- streaming in strange pixelations that came with a sharp slap of her head suddenly hurting.

she lowered herself to the den floor, nose to ezra as he issued a tiny chirrup that filled the den with its cuteness.

ezra saw. gideon saw. and heda did not see how ava struggled, for that strained young face was lifted toward god with beatified smile and all hope shining there, limning her in a glow which chased away the strain for a moment.
god moved here, in the still, small moments, in the children whom the powerful one had left with her.
and she thanked him in a quiet prayer, for the sight of her sons, for the health of rivenwood, for the love of her daughters.

he blinks a few more times before a yawn splits his mouth, the excitement of his new sense siphoning what harvested energy he had gathered during his last nap.

ezra fights it for a bit, but his blinks slowed and his eye lids lowered; heavy.

another, smaller yawn escapes him before he is helplessly whisked away to the realm of dreams where he was a frequent occupant.

feel free to skip ezra if you'd like to keep this thread going! <3

heda lifted silent prayer to her god; for her life, for her son’s visions and health, for her daughters. ava’s attention focused on ezra, who fought the good fight but in the end, succumbed the way they all did. with a quiet series of tiny yawns. 

ava was not so tired. she rose and stepped lightly over the now sleeping ezra. she butted her head affectionately against that of her mother’s, and then ducked under the eaves of the den’s exit. 

better they rest than she. 

another sharp sting wracked the back of her brain — she ignored it, deciding she would patrol the pack’s eastern promontory before bed.