Porcupine Ridge thinner

the ridge.

they'd reached it in due time, though vuk had been forced to pause often. and then had come the horrible creatures that had driven herself and @Terich-mir into the shelter of the trees, only to have the branches stripped around their very bodies. the days that followed had forced the pair to watch helplessly as the green disappeared from their world.

the prey too had gone, and as the week grew warmer, hunger gnawed horribly at vuk's body. terich had been faithful to his word, but his efforts had surfaced with little as the world changed under their paws.

but the ridge -- the patchwork girl cried for taggarik as soon as she came within sight of her former borders. desperate for the protection that he had given her, she was ready to prostrate herself before the alpha pair and beg for their forgiveness.

but the scents had faded, and her heart grew tight with worry. horror stalked her steps as vuk began to search the former territory, reading the story of what had happened, and she began to cry, wandering in circles. under her sobs, however, pain rose in her emaciated body, skinny but for the jut of her belly -- she moved back to terich's side and buried her face against his neck, sobbing with both the shock of the ridge's disappearance and the agony that boiled in her very bones.

soon she was forced to lie down upon the stony earth, screaming in pain as each contraction tightened her belly and forced the puppies down against the unyielding bones of her small pelvis -- dehydration had taken her energy and she begged at times for terich to kill her, though she didn't know if he could understand.

when the great eye of the sun was directly overhead, vuk's silent, exhausted writhing bore fruit -- a puppy slipped from her in a welter of blood, and she cried out in relief, forcing herself upward to lift her hindleg and clean away the birth. but the pup, its lungs unprepared for the outside air, malnourished as she was, did not move beneath her frantic licking.

vuk scarcely had time to mourn before the cracking ripples begain again -- two more children were born into blood, one pale, one dark as its sibling had been -- neither moved. the pale girl shrieked, gathering them helplessly to her breasts; madly, she believed if only they could nurse they would be saved.

but move they did not and her head lay down against the ground; she cried softly, her sobs wrought with fatigue. the pains began again; vuk merely closed her eyes and grit her jaws, moaning once as her body delivered the last and final pup. 

she did not lift her head to look, for surely this one was dead as the others had been, but maternal instinct forced her to search for the babe all the same, and this time the child moved, and cried out in a tiny voice.