Hushed Willows the morning will come soon.

Eleuthera didn’t know much, but she knew that she did not like these apparent “chilly” autumn and winter months. She had inherited the thin constitution for cold of her father, the silky and somewhat threadbare coat of her mother, and slight figure of both her parents — she was not a creature made for the cold. Even in these early months, Eleuthera found herself shivering at night and rueing the oncoming winter during the day. Though she had zero experience with winter, just what she was told in stories, the lilac girl just knew this was going to be something she would hate. She knew it down deep to her bones.

Her days were spent being lazy and avoiding the other cubs, because they were all rather rude and whiney and didn’t seem to want to like her too much. She ate and she slept and she groomed her fur, which were all things she had learned to do from her two mothers, both of whom loved nothing more than to sunbathe and had taught their children dolce far niente well. Perhaps she more than her other siblings would join them as they lay in the dappled sunlight of the willowed arbors, lay betwixt their arms as if she was still a small pup and try to regain the warmth that she was quickly losing as the season progressed.

She was stretching her limbs with a light jaunt when she came across Ibis. Without anything better to do, she quickly diverted her course to intersect with Ibis’s, though she was not moving around but digging and staring at something. As she approached, Eleuthera was almost aghast at the state of disheveled that Ibis currently was; fur every which way and covered in dirt, as if she didn’t even care. Eleuthera’s thin brow furrowed at the sight, about to chastise her sister for representing herself so poorly, when the skull caught her attention. She did not know what it was. 

“What is it?” she inquired sincerely through a newly acquired grimace, instinctively unsettled by the shape of the holes and the porous texture of the thing.