Stone Circle Sister, you are going to be an aunt.

Haha! I see she's had to explain the process twice now - after all her adopted children are through with her, Valette's actual pups will be a breeze... or something different entirely xD

Her sister seemed to deflate, and Nanook took the change in her to mean the worst: that these pups would face life without their father. Papa hadn't been around much for them, but he had been alive, and even that was something. Even when they'd left him, Nanook knew that, somewhere, Pa might have been missing her just as she had been missing him. But if their father was dead - if they had never known him at all - even that would be gone.

But then came Desna's no, and Nanook blinked and jerked her head back as her running mind hit something of a wall. "Oh?" A statement of surprise, but little else beyond that. Nanook knew about as much of navigating interpersonal affairs as she did of making children - or perhaps even less, now that her sister had kindly described the process of the latter to her - and only knew what she would have done if she had been in her sister's position. Probably never move on, but having encountered many who had faced hardships and lived, she had come to see that her methods of coping were not the norm for most.

So she simply said, "okay," and accepted that this was a good thing - but a sadness still radiated from Desna, and wormed beneath the slighter woman's fur. Nanook shifted, and with a frown and a throaty grunt, finally asked, "Then why're you upset?" Maybe something was the matter with Ezekiel, too, or maybe she still mourned the loss of her mate. Nanook couldn't relate on every level, but she knew the hold of grief far too well herself.