Redtail Rise Burning

Age: 25 days. Pups begin to appear outside the den entrance. All welcome, special mention for @Prophet.

The light called to him. As it had been for days now. Pulling him further and further from the dark reaches of the only world he knew. There was something greater out there. More than the space of the walls closed in around him.

He had new strength now. Greater than before. His legs were relatively strong. He still stumbled once in a while, but had gotten the hang of toddling, more or less. Boldly drifting away from his sisters (and his mother, should she be present), Relic was not to be held back in creeping towards the light.

It gaped at him from the mouth of the den, struck his eyes harshly when he popped his head out. He wheeled his head back, shaking it to clear the black spots that dotted his sight. Grass and leaf litter tickled his young paw pads. Forgetting the rapidly dissipating shadows at the edge of his vison, he shoved his nose down, inhaling the loamy scent of the earth.