Stone Circle Do you want to build a snowman? It doesn't have to be a snowman.

There were so many people. And it was a tight fit, and she could scent nothing but the others and earth and dirt, and she realized now she had a need to use the facilities. (The facilities in the wild, being, anywhere that was not the den she was currently trapped within.) Ultimately, she was not at all pleased with the current situation, and trapped in here seemed equivalent to being out in the cold. Valette and Nikai and Steady and her would have been perfectly fine in their den together, she decided with a grimace. 

and then one  of the tiny pups was talking to her. So agrivated was she that she was prepared to snap at the tiny boy, but two things stopped her. First, this was but a tiny pup, and secondly, the tiny pup spoke with the voice of one much older, with none of the lisp and broken words that she and Nikai had spoken for a long while. Furrowing her brows and and trying to decide whether the pup was just very small or had an amazing aptitude for language had a distraction from her rising tension, and while she hardly replied to his first questions, marveling at the boy and his words, merely uttered a "no " to his second question. 

He was one of Amber's pups, she knew, and she also knew that Amber had gone. A quick glance at Valette calmed the odd feeling in her chest, and she dearly hoped the woman never left her. Oddly, a quick memory, a flash of grey and a scent of milk and warmth, crossed her mind, but she pushed it away, hardly wanting or willing to dwell on it at this moment; trapped in a den with the bitter cold raging outside.