Hideaway Strath when we arrive, sons and daughters

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Roarke’s ears perk to the song his mother sings them when she wants them to return to her. Ears swivel to the sides of his head before they slick back to rest atop his skull as she calls his name. Roarke. He cannot speak yet, only vocalize incoherent baby babbles, but he recognizes his name now as his. As he grows cognitive moving beyond the bland ignorant stage of the potato pup he is insanely eager to soak up all the words even if many of them are just sounds. Some he understands and any time he tries to mimic them back they are not even remotely close. The “word” that typically ends up spilling from betwixt his lips in breathless excitement that he manages vocalization at all is some form of alien language, surely, for it is not tundrian or common. Eirlys beats him out of the birthing den, and his paws pound the earthen floor like a war drum as he careens out of the den, nearly stumbling as his butt throws him off balance. He regains it, still getting used to the pudge of his body now that he is walking and has long since left army crawling long beyond him. That was for the worms, anyway.

The world outside is so bright. His steps slow as he nears Lotte, squinting milky blue eyes as they adjust to the unfiltered sunlight though the towering king sequoia offers them plenty of shade. It is bright and so green! He realizes that there is more beneath his paw than just raw earth and he inspects the grass as Eirlys barks at it and scuttles to hide against Lotte’s leg. He presses his paw to the earth watching as he smushes the blades underfoot and lifts his paw to find that while some spring back, defiant, others remain woefully trampled. He sniffs at the indent he has created, noting that grass smells different than dirt and stone. It is …cleaner, refreshing (not that Roarke knows such words but he likes how grass smells). Winter’s bane sneaks a peek at Lotte to make sure she isn’t looking before he ducks his head like a child about to steal a cookie from the jar and slowly nibbles at a few blades of grass, making a blech noise as it’s taste fills his mouth. He scrapes his tongue against his sharp baby teeth trying to scrape the taste off. Mother’s milk tastes so much better.

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