Hideaway Strath that's the language that stuns, scars, breathes into you

Lotte is only partly aware of her children’s unrest at first; her stomach is filled to bursting with meat provided by both Chusi and Arturo and she is sprawled on her side in the half-slumbering doze of the nursing mother. It is the trembling whimper that first draws her attention in a pointed flick of one small, bearlike ear — but Mallaidh’s growing teeth grinding down sensitive flesh startles a muted, “Ai, pikku raivo!” from the smoke-and-shadow bitch. Bending her head to the little bears, Lotte smoothes her tongue over Ceallach’s sturdy spine, nuzzles encouragingly at the dark fury that is Mallaidh, nips a fleck of leaflitter from Eirlys’ snowy fur, and focuses at last on the winter’s bane. Roarke is the third cub to open his eyes, and Lotte is overjoyed at his accomplishment — indeed, it’s been a long time coming and she admittedly feared he might never open them. “Hush now, mo stóirín,” she coos to the snowclad eagle, borrowing a line from one of Brontide Corten’s songs. “Have you found your eyes at last, wee bear?”

She exchanges a glance with Arturo, who looks proudly on, murmuring his own soft reassurances to his son. “It is Eirlys’ turn now,” she quips, making note of the fact that three out of four of the Fearghal bears have functioning eyes now. She draws Roarke to her breast, cuddling him close that he might not feel afraid, trying to keep him somewhere there isn’t so much light to disorient and upset him. She hums the summoning call of the tundra and lets it morph into a soft lullaby, smoothing her tongue over his crown.