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When something pressed against her face, Towhee curled her lip and grumbled as she very slowly surfaced from sleep. Before her eyes even opened, everything came back to her: Camilla was dead, she was looking after the pups with Phox, her brother had stepped out for a little bit... Towhee snapped fully awake and nearly jerked her head upward, only to freeze when she realized it must be her nephew or niece (son or daughter? neon and naughter?) crawling on her face.

Gently, Towhee slid her muzzle out from beneath Fig. She could see his mouth open in a silent scream and bit back a sigh. He was almost definitely hungry. She felt a strange impulse to tuck him in beside her flank, as if she could nurse him. But of course she couldn't. Even if she was pregnant from her recent forays—a thought which she'd barely let herself entertain ever since Camilla's untimely demise—she wasn't lactating and so there was nothing she could offer the pups in that department.

But she could and would try to offer them meat slurry, no matter how futile it sometime felt. After rearranging the pups beside one another, Towhee rose to her feet and stepped outside, where she found some dried meat. She chewed it into a mush but didn't bother swallowing. Instead, she swung around and reentered the den, depositing the meat-and-slobber soup right on the floor beside the kiddos.