Neverwinter Forest darling dears o'mine

Like his dandelion fluff brother, Cypress wriggled his pert posterior with inextinguishable excitement. A sense of competition had begun to rear its head whenever he and Rannoch set out to do some task together; it was a strange, tense feeling that had the boy glancing sidelong at his littermate with vivid intensity. They were at the age where decipherable comparisons were beginning to be drawn between the boys; although they would always be evenly matched in terms of height, Rannoch’s bigger boned structure and heavier ropes of muscle promised a bearlike bulk that Cypress lacked. Noch would be a brawler like his similarly-patterned father, but the raven — although possessing the same abundance of grit, muscle, and temper — would bear the leaner muscle of their sainted mother.

Cypress waited, the flicker of hackles even more prominent across his shoulders and nape, crouched like a waiting carrion crow as he counted down with his mother — “one…two…”

— “three!”

Both boys’ paws burst into a flurry of motion, but Cypress was concentrating far too hard to loose his usual warcry; it was fortunate the mouth of the den was wider than the combined width of both Neverwinter princes, for they were evenly matched as they shot forward and simultaneously flew toward their waiting father. Now Cypress grinned, the wicked, no good, gap-toothed smile of a child being permitted amnesty for a delicious bit of mischief. He gathered himself and leapt, his gangly limbs aiming for his father’s hindquarters.