Blackfeather Woods the green mile

The lives within the silent one’s womb were not far from his mind. He knew of her pregnancy but not of the male that had planted those seeds within her—but it did not matter, their lineage, for a life was a life. There would be more to Blackfeather Woods, more souls that would devote themselves to the pack and, in time, the Brotherhood—but those things, so far into the future that they were, found little purchase within his head. The thoughts slipped and tumbled, retreating to the recesses of his mind with the promise of returning at a much later date. For now, he waited, until an invitation touched his ears and he could not simply wait any longer.

Into the world, there came new life.

Kove was slow, moving steadily in the direction of the glen; he saw no reason to rush, not when the new mother’s song lacked the anguish of a child lost. Time was taken, even, to rummage through a cache for the freshest thing he could find—an otter, plump and reeking of its fishy diet—a gift for the surely exhausted woman. But from there his direction was set, each moment that flitted by bringing him closer to the communal whelping den.

His entrance was not rushed as he paused just outside the mouth of the cave, staring in and letting his gaze drift until it landed on a pallid mass—there. Carefully, he entered, each step taken just as quietly as the last, worrisome over the disturbance he might create. The otter was set down near to the mute woman, close enough to be within her reach but far enough that it could not touch her, before he settled back on his haunches several steps next to her. With a sudden softness in his eyes, he watched the sleeping mass, gradually turning his gaze downwards so that he might steal a peek at the newborns; they were hidden within their mother’s embrace, the palest of the two invisible until a closer look was taken—two, he counted, but wondered if there might be more hidden beneath them.

He didn’t dare wake her to ask, recalling how drained his first wife had been so long ago by the wear of childbirth.

Content with watching the small family, he did not make any move to leave—he lingered there, quiet and watchful, until he was struck by a realisation: how could the woman without a voice name her brood? And there followed the notion that he might take the opportunity to do so in her place, though such an act was not something he could so easily commit without warning. Thus, he chuffed—it bordered between a cough and a bark—in an attempt to wake her, to be given the permission to gift her joys back to the woods through names.