Heron Lake Plateau the heart

For a moment, it seemed his inept flailing had frightened off the big smelly male from his interfering hanging about, as he disappeared from Owen's vicinity to go take care of Phoebe instead. Owen waved his head uncertainly about in the open air to confirm that the creature had vanished, and then with surprise and delight started to fumble his way forward-ish again. Food was this direction. He thought. Dangit, all this fuss and kerfuffle was so confusing. His alert nose detected Kite squeaking and scuffling someplace in the vicinity, but Owen dismissed her and kept casting about for Raven's belly instead.

But he didn't get very far at all along his crooked baby-seal-flumph of a trail before the hulking male was back again to mess things up. Owen tried to loose an authoritative yap to command the creature leave him alone once more, as he angled to give the beast another hefty THWAP with his paw, but it flopped hard, coming out as more of a pathetic mewling yip. —Get that big boxy muzzle out of my face! Get back, you big bully! And put me down! Owen yelled in surprise as he found himself hauled aloft—a position that could only be removing him further and futher from his much-desired milk. He was too surprised to mount a proper protest however before @Quixote carefully deposited him on the ground once more. He started a feebler wail of confusion and began to throw his head back and forth in frustrated protest when he found his skull thonking straight into a looming wall of fuzz that the bullying male monster had somehow magically made appear before him. (Gasp! A regular warlock, that one. it seemed!) His voice immediately trailed off into silence as he felt about more tentatively with paws and muzzle both, and then greedily latched on to suckle from the first teat he could find, the topmost post nearest Raven's hind legs.

...There really was more than a little irony to Owen's continuing complaints about their father's treatment of him, given that Owen himself was less than careful that his confused flailing limbs and desperate lunge for milk avoid striking all his siblings. But he himself was resting beside Momma and contentedly filling his belly now, and so far as Owen was concerned that was all that really mattered in this world. Bulldozing over/under/through sisters apparently had its perks.