Sun Mote Copse souls in the wind must learn how to bend

Tags are for reference, though anyone’s welcome!

Meerkat and Skipjack returned from an early foray, nudged back home by the threat of a rainstorm. Rather than join her in The Taigh, Skipjack declared he wanted to head to @Seal’s Nook instead. She made a noise of assent, then ducked beneath the gnarled old roots of her family’s home. She’d hoped someone else might be there but the cottage was empty, leaving Meerkat alone with her thoughts. Her stomach knotted.

She drew in a breath, then folded down on a worn fur. Her whisky eyes stared vaguely out the door as the gloom gathered. During their field trip to the falls, Skip had asked her the question she’d been dreading: “Ma, can we go on a longer trip someday soon? Like Grandma?”

Meerkat wrestled with herself as the rain began to fall. She could let Skipjack accompany Towhee the next time she went traveling, but sending her very young, blind son out with her aging, deaf mother didn’t seem like a very good idea. Anyhow, it might be a moot point, if Towhee was carrying pups now.

She knew she needed to speak to Njord. Maybe they could arrange to take Skip and @Otter on a trip somewhere, preferably before their son decided to run off by himself again. Meerkat didn’t like the thought of leaving the copse for long but she would ask the others to stay behind to look after it, just for a little while. Between Towhee, @Fennec and the older children that remained, it would be in good paws.

The soft growl of thunder cut into her thoughts as the rain fell harder, faster. Meerkat shifted, wondering if at any moment someone caught out in the storm might pop into The Taigh.