Broken Antler Fen i might never be a knight in shining armor

for papa @Sebastian ! <3

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Mato stirs awake abruptly, taking in a soft gasp of air as he blinks, groggily around not quite awake enough to fully understand what he sees as his frenzied, half asleep gaze flutters around unable to grasp onto one solid thing as he blinks rapidly, his head heavy as it falls back against his paws and a low snort leaves his black, leathery nostrils as his eyelids slide closed. Mato isn’t sure what has woken him and he falls asleep for a few more minutes before he is awoken for real and lets out a wide yawn and a low groan. Some days he is the last to wake up but this is mostly because of his midnight excursions to stargaze. He thinks the stars are at their most beautiful on the clear nights, when they wink down at him from the night sky but he also likes them at dawn and dusk, too. He can see the sunlight filter in through the mouth of the den and he shifts, contemplating going back to sleep but knows that he won’t be able to and forces himself to his paws and ambles out of the den where he pauses to bite at an itch on his leg before he smooths over the mussed fur with a stroke of his salmon pink tongue before he squints against the sunlight.

He draws in a deep breath as he makes his way to one of the pack’s caches in the search for food. He can hunt for himself now but his late sleeping habits has made him too hungry to muster the energy for that. He tells himself he’ll take something from the cache for the morning and that he’ll replace it later in the day. As he does not particularly have much planned — explore a bit, maybe check out the borders again and wonder when he can cross over them and into the free territories that spilled beyond as far as his eye can see — so it will be easy for him to hunt for the cache.

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