Neverwinter Forest petroica traversi

Cypress’ manner of taking in the world was wholly different from his brother’s. Where Rannoch was quick to smile and extremely active, Cypress tended to sleep much of the time and spend his waking moments quietly observing the world around him. He possessed, at this tiny, overwhelmed age, a bad case of Resting Bitch Face — but now, looking at his brother with characteristically furrowed brow and then turning his milky blue gaze toward his parents, he felt the warm love and affection that always swam within him billow up through his body until he wriggled fervently and a smile — his very first — curved his pudgy mouth with such force that his mouth gaped open. He could not contain the ticklish, bubbly feeling that stirred within his body and seemed to spread out to the tip of each infinitesimal toe — and he burbled a squeak of a laugh.

As Rannoch latched onto his ear with new gusto, Cypress turned his head in a clumsy attempt to mouth at the dust bunny in turn, but his reactions were slow and delayed as befitted his youth. The sense of hearing, too, was making itself known to the young boys, but that was more of a gradual process. He didn’t think anything of the odd squelch that was more sensation than sound and merely tried to capture his brother’s tail — which was now a muted blob of grey against the brown of the den floor — between his gums that were just beginning to show the splinters of teeth.