Blacktail Deer Plateau Beyond the veil

Pura felt like an under-cooked bun.

It was not a comparison he would think to make in all the long and unknown years that stretched out ahead of him. Not just because his infantile mind was ten holes short of a sieve, or because he would grow up to be unimaginative - that would come with time. It was just unlikely that baked goods would feature in his upbringing in any way.

But it was the best comparison. He lacked the crisp edges of something fully baked, and the center was still a bit doughy. Like his sister, Pura was small, a freckled, blue-grey parcel of ill-defined features and small, twitchy movements that he had no real control over. They had left the oven too early, and the immediate effects of that were obvious; Ty and O.J. were vast, gluttonous titans next to specks of fluff, but their presence sparked an innate competitiveness in the tiny Virtúte pup. In the very first fight of his life, he flailed ineffectually at Hawkeye's belly, too small and too new to latch on, but trying his very damnedest to do it. Warmth egged him on - from Hawkeye, from her pups, from Saēna's tiny little body, and the wolves that breathed ghosts into the air outside.

Somewhere else, the body of his dead mother grew colder.