Bearclaw Valley pickin' me a bouquet of dogwood flowers

The sound of her laughter brought a grin to his lips. Then she entered the den and his tail started wagging a mile per minute, weight shifting from side to side with excitement. She didn’t seem to be bothered by the small space, nor anything else about the den, which made him glad; he wondered what his mother would have thought, had she been there with them now. The way her paw pressed against her abdomen snapped him right out of his thoughts, a combination of concern and interest flickering through his expression. Was she okay? He stepped toward her, head low and muzzle pointed towards her stomach, planning to press his nose against her underbelly—but the sound of her voice stopped him dead in his tracks, frozen right where he stood for a nice, solid few seconds.

Us.

It rang through his thoughts as his head snapped back up and he stared at her, an array of emotions shifting through his eyes as if they were projecting a slide show; concern, joy, surprise, and so many more. He couldn’t move, even as he was littered with kisses. His eyes followed her, looking where she looked, following the to and fro motion of her tail—

We.

His tail began to sway, matching hers, but it wasn’t long before the speed had increased nearly tenfold. “Yeah,” he praised, an uncontrollable grin spread across his lips. “Ours.” Just as the word left his mouth, so did the self-control over his body, and he found himself quickly closing the distance between them. He tried to bury his muzzle in the fur covering the side of her neck, caring not about the potential of teeth meeting his flesh. He was too overjoyed to even think that far ahead, the decision to give her space having flown right out the window. In his mind, she understood it all: what was happening to her, how strongly he cared, how much it all meant to him, and so on. He was too caught up in the moment to think of much more than her and how she was his.