Swiftcurrent Creek Why can't I get just one kiss

Kukutux. 

Cygnet's expression would have soured if only it was not so painful to scowl. She could barely see where they were going, and fumbled now and again with her footing. She bristled, keenly aware with every move she made just how vulnerable she was. Accompanied with the spar she'd lost to Sven, she'd left the pack hunt feeling ashamed with her own inadequacy. Now she couldn't even walk straight; she had to tilt her head, and point the barely-opened eye before her, canting her other ear back so she might have a chance at protecting her blind side. 

The injustice of it all made her seethe. She would be like this forever because of that kelp-licker.

She tripped over a branch, and whirled on it, growling and snapping her jaws- only to clack them shut several times, unsuccessfully. FUCK! She shouted, teeth bared as she squinted this way and that for the offending stick- but everything was a blur. 

Everything save for the dark patch of fur that was Akavir, and it took all of her strength not to attack him just so that she could direct her anger somewhere. She could see him well enough to bite him, and the taste of blood might just-

no.

Squealing in frustration, she threw all of her energy into digging, furiously. She barked and yapped at the ground, an anxious creature with bottled-up energy that could only go one way. She tore at the ground with both paws, heedless of where she kicked the dirt though it was cold and tough. She felt the pull against her claws, and the muscles in her shoulders as she hit earth she could not dig through, woven together with a network of roots. Her claws raked against them, tore through some, but could not pull the earth apart anymore. She belted out a roar, and veered away from the divet in the ground, only to find herself jabbed in the chest by the same branch that had tripped her before. 

She grabbed the godforsaken stick and yanked it. She could not see it, but could tell by the rattling of dead leaves that it was a branch hewn from a tree by the wind- and was longer than the length of her body. The limb was no more than an inch in diameter at its end, but she clenched her teeth into it, and turned her head back toward Akavir, still breathing hard. She squeezed her jaws until it hurt, and when she finally opened them, the branch stuck for a moment before it fell out of her mouth. She pinned it down with a paw, and with her fit over, she flicked her short tail up, hunched her shoulders, and motioned for Akavir to continue leading the way.