Bearclaw Valley don't let it shake your steady thread cutting hand

@Nunataq & @Marten -- though laurel's puppies are welcome! tags in thread are for visibility

in the days following their discovery of the puppies being abandoned, indra was at a crossroads. she could not -- she would not -- sacrifice these puppies to the same fate she and laurel had experienced. that reason alone made her possessive of them, made her resolve to ignore them softer -- and with each passing day her steeliness disintegrated until she regarded the two babes as something almost like family.

she wanted so much for laurel's babies to grow without pain or suffering --and she still wanted them to never know the defeating, crushing force of paranoia or loneliness gripping them -- but somehow, that want was extended to nunataq and marten. somehow, the brood that was not laurel's and not her own was afforded the same want, the same ironclad resolution that they would never feel unwanted.

delicately, indra stirred from the den she had crafted for them -- like laurel, she often set up a great show of rejecting @Xan any time he came close to laurel's brood -- but, for the departed woman's, indra did allow an occasional visit. she would often stonily observe as he went about his business, receding to laurel's den until he was done.

as far as indra saw it, she would have little to gain from denying nunataq and marten their father. indra was neither their mother, nor an aunt -- she was only a supplicant. even @Tadec, who visited often and whose presence indra dearly enjoyed -- even tadec was not their blood.

painfully indra looked upon the two of them before she got up. without much of a word she left the den, sitting in the sunlight right outside where the trio of them slept.