Heron Lake Plateau you're a time bomb, baby

The noise Kite made was something along the lines of, “bee-roo-roo!” — a peeping distress cry that started high and then dipped down the musical scale to a more mournful tone, punctuated by the rounding of her little mouth. Once Raven started grooming her in long, slow strokes, though, Kite soothed. At first the ministrations excited her, and amped up the buzzing of her body to Angry Alarm Clock levels — but then she dragged in a deep breath and loosed it on a quavering sigh, “looking” instinctively toward Raven with a wildly bobbling head.

Once she calmed the heck down, the pale puppy found it almost ridiculously easy to right herself. The tension engendered when she panicked or got frustrated with her inabilities made things so much worse — but she couldn’t control her emotions, yet. Deep down, Kite was a sunny child with a cheerful disposition; it was just hard to see that (and hard for her to feel that) when her wibbling, wobbling body gave her so much trouble. Here with Raven, though, as the tension melted away, she turned her face toward her mother as a soft, pleased burble warbled in her throat.