Redhawk Caldera No, I don't have a harp.

He took a long steadying breath through his nose, then refocused on the yawning den entrance in the distance. From here, he couldn't see or hear anything. He could smell them, though. Newborns had a special smell to which nothing in the world compared. Soft, fresh, and warm. He would almost describe it as pure white, if smells had colours. He wasn't creative enough to come up with the comparison, though, and simply inhaled the clean smell and let his lips turn up in a faint smile.

To Towhee's question, he simply answered, "they usually aren't. Their first kid was a complete wreck, so at least it can't be worse than that." He hadn't had the pleasure of meeting the Blackthorn family's only worthwhile offspring, but he knew of the three "failures". Eljay was more unstable than an avalanche, and as he'd said, was probably the worst of them. Probably dead, too. Lucy had (he thought) died so young that she was of no consequence, and he figured she'd been weak, too. And Liffey lacked loyalty, having pledged herself to some other leader over her own parents, not unlike Wildfire. Dispersing completely normal fact of life, if you didn't have a stick up your ass, like Nightjar sometimes did. He believed a wolf either followed their parents and their successors or led themselves, and severely judged those who chose another leader over their own family. He had chased his own sister out for it and he refused to acknowledge Liffey as a worthwhile wolf for it, too.

"They say third time's the charm," he remarked, having thus far been completely oblivious to the fact that Towhee counted herself among their family and might find his judgment offensive, and he hoped that was the case with the Blackthorn family's third litter.