went up the water spout

To the rendezvous sure for @Whittier @Swift @Allure II and @Pasha ! Tagging @Scimitar @Kaskara @Kieran @Tryphon - I figure this is OK since they're about ten weeks now? Adults, feel free to assume that  Bazi just decided this without input, because she is a bossy-pants.

Bazi felt guilty. She had spent more time away from her children lately than nature would have liked - not much more, but enough to leave a mark on her conscience. She had just been so.. distracted, in the wake if Danica's death and the reaching arms of inter-pack tensions that had finally caught up to the them from the South. She gave the latter less thought than the first, preferring to escape into the play-pretend world she had constructed for herself in the Emberwood. It was quiet there, and calm.

But no more. The pups were old enough to be weaned and set loose on the forest - within reason. She roused them early, brusquely - it had become her parenting style by default. "We're leaving the den," she instructed in a firm but calm voice, looking into their dimly lit faces. Two pale, two dark. All of them different, strange, and full of unrealised potential. Her sacrifice.

They walked up the slope, heading for the peak. Mom first, children in a disorganised tumble behind her. Bazi have them free rein - if Whittier was left behind, he would just have to use his nose. The trees thinned and grew taller, stretching high into the waking sky, and the terrain became an undulating scatter of rock, earth, and foliage. No child of hers would grow up on a cushion.

When they finally arrived, the first rays of sunshine had cut their way down, piercing the crest of their very own Pride Rock.