Morningside Cuesta this common blood iv

There was snow on the ground today. The first of the season that the cuesta had seen, and here she was, cutting a dark path through the blinding landscape. It reminded her of the games she'd played as a child, which she'd taught to her own children on White Spine, and then in Round Valley, where all the other children learned it, too. But it had started here.

She wandered the old rendezvous place, a warm but sinking feeling in her chest. Sometimes, she could hear her father's voice calling out to her and her siblings. The patient but unyielding tone he used to use on Sunny. The confidence he'd had in Dawn. His adoration for her and her littermates, and for the three that had come after.

Easy threaded through the dry, brittle lavender grove, heading for a fallen knot of trees. A willow had grown straight up from one of the trunks she'd long thought dead, and now it sheltered the entrance of a long-forgotten den.

A lifetime ago, she'd been born in this place.

Easy squeezed herself through the entrance without much active thought and began clearing it out. Packing it with soft, dry grasses. Pulling out her own fur to line a threadbare bed. The next time she thought at all, it was as a contraction hit.

She remembered that she'd gone out ahead of Milan. That she was alone here, far from Round Valley, where she'd meant to give birth. But she'd given birth alone on White Spine as well, and she knew that she could do it.

Six hours later, she lay curled around four tiny bodies and slept.

@Hellcat @Danger @Baby — welcome to the world! Milan and @Searchlight can come find her if you like! If not in this thread, you can assume that she called for them as soon as she woke up. I am not sure what's going on with the Stone Circle thread at the moment, so we can just say that she has weird brain fog and the birth came unexpectedly. Dated for Dec 1.