Blackfeather Woods We have waited long for the [M]aster's song and it's time to join in the chorus...

Life came to Vaati in a rush.

It wasn't as though he hadn't been alive in the womb. He had been - it had just been a different sort of life. It had been a quiet, comfortable life. A worry-less life. But this one...

In the first instant he had bene pushed towards this life, he had known that it was a far more difficult one than the one he was leaving. This one was harsh, demanding, cold. This one did not just let him be, floating comfortably suspended in time and space and womb fluids. This one made him move. This one made him exit. This one made him fall onto hard earth and cry out in misery and lamentation of what he once had.

Clavicus, as he was so shortly dubbed upon entering this new world, yowled unhappily the moment he plopped onto the ground. He had done his best to fight his exit, but in the end, his mother had won. She didn't want him inside of her anymore, and so he wasn't. He was cast out in the cold, and none too pleased with it either.

The platinum-furred pup cried as loud as his teensy lungs would permit until at long last, he was pulled close. All of his complaints seemed to vanish in that moment where he snuggled against pale fur and other little bodies that were warm in spite of their obnoxious squirming. He found a teet and began to suckle with a greed he'd never before known, but forgot his awareness of almost instantly. In fact, he forgot everything - his happy world in the womb, his uncomfortable first introduction with the den floor, and everything in between. All he knew was this moment, snuggled against his siblings and his mother, suckling happily at warm milk while Potema's tongue slid soothingly across his spine.

He could work with this.