Blacktail Deer Plateau A sailor went to sea, sea, sea

Her rooting through the soft soil of the den's floor was bound to unearth something, and in fact, if Saēna's eyes had been open, she would have caught the pointed end of an earthworm wriggling just beneath her nose. She wasn't perceptive, being only a baby, and therefore hadn't noticed it touching her left nostril. A pity, for it would have elicited one of the first happy noises she would produce if she had noticed it.

Instead, she noticed something else. The air currents whirled around her as Peregrine disturbed them, first with his voice and then with the churning of his paw in her direction. The voices that echoed in the den from time to time made Saēna's hair all prickle up, since they resonated deep within her core, not unlike overwhelming bass at a rock concert. His was the deepest, though she could not recognize him from that alone. Like every other time, Saēna encountered Peregrine's foot like it was the first time ever.

Her nose brushed against the coarse fur, wriggled curiously, and then her head reared back and a mighty sneeze erupted from her yawning mouth. Behaving as though nothing had happened at all, despite the rather conspicuous booger that had found its way onto her foster father's toe, she happily set about gumming the Alpha's blunt nail with no regard for how disrespectful she was being of his lofty position. So content was she with this new toy that she scarcely noticed the thudding footfalls that pounded through her chest to announce a newcomer, nor the slightly-less-deep rumbling that she would come to associate with her real father.