The Sunspire please twirl me one more time and don’t stop spinning me

Come meet the fam! I’ll just pp the puppies being lil beans, unless you guys want in

 

The sylph had only been made a new mother for little over a week, and she knew this was exactly the reason she had been put on this planet. She loved absolutely every part of the process of creating new life: conception, pregnancy, birth, that absolutely overwhelming sense of new motherhood. She absolutely loved to nuzzle their little, wriggling forms and bestow kisses upon their tiny crowns, to croon sweet lullabies and proudly show them off to Seabreeze and whomever else visited that day. Her heart, her mind, her body, her spirit; motherhood completely filled every part of her, every need and want she ever had. It was the way she had felt about Dakarai, a million times over, and she was utterly addicted to being in love with her babies. 

The open-nature of her whelping den had largely worked in her favor. The weather held and there was little rain. Mostly, there was a soft and gentle sun that she allowed to warm her little babies' backs as they milled about the immediate vicinity, upon the bed of leaves she had worked to line the crag with and pad the earth for her mewling babes' fragile limbs and kissable bellies. She watched them as if they were the most fascinating things in the world, and they were! All whimpers and whines, with no sight or ability to hear — and so far closer to the gods than she could ever hope to be, not even in her deepest of prostrations. 

Little over one year ago, Sirius, Aries and Cassiopeia had been this age — so small and so helpless, but they had been dragged all over the Teekon Wilds as Teaghlaigh fled the coast and sought refuge further inland. It had been a time of fear and foreboding, as their situation was only to get worse once shelter had been found. Olive wondered if, had her first litter had such a mellow and lovely beginning to their life [as had the children of the nameless man], things might have turned out differently for them. Everyday Olive grieved for their loss of innocence, but then she would turn her attentions back to her new clutch and revel in the abundance of theirs.  
 
The babies nursed. The songbirds sang. Olive smiled and blinked her eyes against the dappled, noonday sun. It was good.

Wraen had heard about the first litter of Sunspire being born, but had not taken any care to visit and congratulate the new mother. Despite the approval of leaders of this unexpected burden to the ranks, she did not agree with their decisions and therefore harboured very sour feelings towards the mother, who - in her opinion - had sneaked her way in the ranks with the full-knowledge of what she had been doing - and no particular interest in those furry blobs of flesh that would very soon outgrow their milk-only diet and would be demanding, but pretty useless additions to the pack for many months before they would be able to hunt and provide for themselves. 

And because she was not the one, who would speak her opinions out loud to people she did not particularly fancy, she had decided that the best way to avoid conflicts was avoiding the culprits altogether. With herself being constantly on the move, hunting and providing for the rest, it was easy to do. And therefore she was pretty ignorant to the fact that one of the caches she had instilled was rather near to the place, where Olive lived with her puppies, and it would happen so that today, on return from a hunt that had resulted in taking down a sickly goat-kid, she happened to pass the area. 

With herself plain in view, it would now be impolite to pretend that she had not noticed her pack-mate, therefore Wraen sighed, put down the remnants of her kill and approached to exchange some common pleasentries and then move on. "Good morning to you," she said politely and even managed to put in some warmth in those words as well.

Nine days in, and the fuzzy little caterpillar had reluctantly developed a schedule, propelled entirely by the alarm clocks that were his siblings. He seemed to take a lackadaisical approach to everything — he was always the last one to the milk bar and thought nothing of falling asleep mid-feed, but it wasn’t that he was weak or listless. He simply cruised through life without any real sense of urgency, exploring his surroundings with his paws and mouth, puttering around with little fwip-fwip-fwips of his forelimbs. “No hurry, no worry. The less you do, the more you do,” might have been his motto, were he able to construct one.

Olive’s youngest was a quiet baby; he occasionally burbled or cooed, but he never cried, even when he was taken by surprise or unceremoniously squashed by his siblings or surroundings. Presently he was consumed with trying to worm his way out from under whichever of his siblings had broken his nursing streak, but…well, it seemed like an awful lot of work, after all. He’d already begun to enjoy the slightly squashed feeling, anyway. There was something secure and familiar about it. “Hey, man, you mind?” he seemed to say, one infinitesimal paw poking out from beneath the pile and flexing experimentally.

“Yeah, all right, fair, looks like you mind.” He sucked his paw back in.

Olive didn’t get too many visitors, and she was fine with that. In fact, she rather appreciated it. Since her fellow midwife, the lovely and enciente Seabreeze, had taken up residence in her sun-dappled stone dwelling— more of a whelping area than a whelping den, per se — Olive had felt a real sense of solidarity, safety and sisterhood, the likes of which she had never experienced before. She felt supported in every aspect, in more ways than she could have ever imagined… but still in the late hours of the night, the druid would glance up to the heavens and muse upon the anonymous, pale man who would likely never meet his children. It was a shame, because of how simply exquisite his children were.

The babes, a colorful trio, were much too small to do anything except nurse and sleep and receive momma-cuddles, but still the mother liked to believe that she could already see hints of their eventual personalities. It was things that she felt more than she observed, as they were each distinct manifestations of herself. Looking into their babyish faces was like looking into tiny, amazing mirrors. Séamus was the ebullient first born, while Eleuthera played the proper little girl, who was determined not to be outdone by either of her brothers in their zest nor their complacency. Olive gathered Oaxaca in her twiggy forelimbs, her most placid baby, and pressed her nose against the velvet of his calico crown. 

She and Seabreeze would often take turns nap and watching the kids. In-between naps, when their schedules managed to sync, the two would chat about their futures of their children; Olive’s newly born, and Seabreeze’s soon to be born. Seabreeze, however, was not there in the moment, so Olive neither slept nor rested — as such, she was immediately aware of her packmate the moment she stepped into the mise-en-scène, but she was not concerned. Olive cheerily turned her face towards Wraen and proffered a sincere smile. She did not know Wraen well, but certainly she had come to visit the new family and bring a most valued gift — a meal.  “Oh, good morning,” she greeted. Immediately, she wanted to say things like come meet my babies! and aren’t they adorable and ask me their names, oh, ask me anything! but Olive swallowed such desires and allowed herself nothing more than a very cordial and appropriate “It has been such a lovely, tepid spring so far.” The rest was probably implied simply by the way the mother beamed.

Wraen had been determined not to like Olive, because of the assumption that she had sneaked her way in the pack, knowing full well that she was expecting. For whatever reason this had not seemed right by the hunter, even if the rest of the pack had nothing against it. 

Yet she felt something change fundamentally, when the pale gray wolfess turned to look at her and return the greeting. There was an otherworldly quality about her and such a strong aura around her, that she found it hard to resist it's charm. All the dark and tired thoughts were whisked away from her mind and the steely coldness of her green eyes melted, giving place to a sincere and warm glow. 

Maybe it was not all about Olive in that moment of change. Maybe she had been stirred by a distant memory of a similar spring day, seeing her mother with puppies by her side. And, though she still felt that the whole situation with the overflow of the babies was wrong, the feeling she had no right to spoil this sacred moment. After all - the little ones were innocents that they had to protect. 

"Started a bit too late for my liking," she replied and then added the lie that Terance had told her, "everything will be alright." Even if it wasn't meant to be, at this moment she understood, why he had said and what he had meant by it. "Are you hungry?"

Oaxaca’s little apple head shot up, bobbling and wavering with the unsteadiness of infancy. He was swept to her breast with fluid possessiveness, giving no more protest than a handful of loose change or dice, and atop his wiggly noodle neck his head tipped back at an exaggerated angle. He seemed to peer at her, though his eyes were still sealed shut, and he made of this insignificant gesture a momentous thing: though he scarcely knew what he was doing or why, his puppy-blunt muzzle fell open as a little cough of a laugh sprang free. It was nice to be free of the oppressive weight of his siblings, and the ticklish sensation of his mother’s nose against his crown was so appealing to him that he gave a wriggle or two of pleasure. All four of his little toothpick limbs splayed out until he was utterly spread eagle, and he let fall his chin with a sigh of contentment so deep he almost seemed to deflate.

SORRY

It was so strange how the druid could almost feel the release of her son’s lovely energy as he found repose with ease. Whatever he felt, she felt; and hopefully, vice versa, so completely in tune, in a way that only a mother could know her child, a being of her own womb. Still, her other two — they were not like this, and that was not a bad thing. It was only a thing, you know?

With a smile that shone through the facade of sudden sleepiness, Olive raised her lilting gaze to meet Wraen’s, and struggled for a moment to find it. She almost felt drunk upon the flood of new-mommy hormones, and suspected it might last for some while longer — at least, until she stopped nursing — but the ashen mother would be totally fine to feel this way forever. It wasn’t impossible, after all. “Yes,”  Olive obliged sweetly, blinking her long lashes unintentionally slowly. “It will be alright.” 

She didn’t know exactly to what the Beta was referring, but Olive disregarded it because the simple fact remained true, totally independent of the circumstances she may find herself in. 

At the mention of hunger, Olive tittered. “Oh, I am,”  she chimed almost laughingly. These days, her appetite knew no bounds! Almost daily, when Olive said her prayer unto the stars, she thanked her gods for the security of Sunspire and their caches, on which was oh-so-conveniently located just down the hill from her and Seabreeze’s dwelling. It was always stocked with the most delicious of meats, which Olive ate earnestly and with gusto. Milk production could simply not be sustained on her customary vegetarian diet, so she relented and carefully place her ethical dilemma on the back burner. “and I am not the only one.” the woman commented, gesturing at the two babes who pulled at her belly and ate hungrily — and the who rested against her forearms.  “Will you join us?” Olive continued to assume that the slain goat was for her — but there was no reason to consume it alone.

Over time Wraen would find out that her packmate was more peculiar than one could catch at first glimpse (having never encountered anyone, who ate plants only - unless, of course, it was an ungulate and she was hunting it). Now, however, as Olive accepted her offer, the hunter picked up the remnants of the kid and brought it over to the mother. She cast a quick glance at the little loaves of puppies by the woman's side and then - as if suddenly feeling embarrassed - retreated and took a seat within a talking distance, but not too close.

"Don't mind me - I had a piece of it already," she replied, now noticing for the first time that the scent of Seabreeze and a faint whiff of her brother's presence. She seemed to think about it for a moment, then looked over her shoulder and scanned quickly the area - no sign of the two - which was a relief. "Do they have names already?" she asked.

Oaxaca remained oblivious to the conversation that swirled around him, his manner akin to a passenger on a bus, wearing earbuds, listening to some Fiji, or Common Kings, or Bob Marley. He was too young to know what music sounded like, but he bobbed his head and drummed his little forepaws to a rhythm he found innate, and the warbling little grunts and groans he made seemed almost intentionally undulating. They could’ve — and should’ve — autotuned that business and made a YouTube video; it would’ve gone viral in minutes.

 

I’m so lame, but is it okay if we close up with your post? I’m really thankful that Wraen and Olive got to know each other! ❤

“Yes,”  the mother responded, her smile bright and proud as she entertained the possibility of talking about her children. She was so absolutely enamored with them in every single way that it was hard to not let her love for them consume her every thought and every action. Still, she was teetering quite upon that particular edge of utter and total devotion — the kind where you’d die for them, the kind she had never truly experienced before. Everything up until now, Olive realized, had been in self-defense; sdefense against her own ego and karma, but also acting from a place of real fear and unsettled-ness. Now, she felt truly free.

The misted femme leant her head down to plant a kiss upon the skullcap of her smallest son, her chillin’-est son, her calico-eat son. “This is Oaxaca,”  she introduce as he bobbed along to a song that she could almost hear — perhaps if she hadn’t been in the presence of an acquaintance, Olive might have been able to perceive her son’s son more easily. They were a musical family, surprisingly. Olive loved to sing and dance with Seabreeze (though neither of the matron-midwives were that active anymore and warble alongside her little babies, singing their songs that were part nonsense, part genius.  Olive then pointed down her muzzle to the two cubs nursing at her belly. The woman usually felt vulnerable with this act, and did not choose to feed her cubs with anyone but her soulsister present, but here she felt quite at ease. “Séamus and Eleuthera. Two boys, one girl… The same ratio as my first litter.”  

Then, without much warning, Eleuthera flailed one arm forward and caught her brother Séamus right on the nose. He squalled, then she squalled — as the two were wont to do — and though their mother leant her head down to cajole and pacify them with kisses and a deep, empathetic understanding of their frustration, neither’s sobs could be quelled. Olive cut a guilty what’re yah gonna do? grimace at Wraen and return to trying to soothe her two crying babies, while hoping that her youngest son would remain placid. She trusted that he would.      

Those were very unusual names, but only because Wraen's family had a different history of choosing them. She was about to ask, if either "oaxaca" or "eleuthera" had a meaning, a description, when the babies began to cry. Though the sound was familiar and she had an instant urge to respond and help them, there was another emotion - mild irritation by their high-pitched voices. The sound of them brought her back to the time, when she had helped to babysit her young siblings with a lot of enthusiasm, which had waned considerably after a while, because the noise they made... was awful and at times you just could not comfort them. Especially colicky ones.

Therefore she was also relieved that these kids weren't her own - at this moment, while Olive worked hard and patiently to calm them down - they did not market themselves as a very desirable "objects" to have. She got to her feet and with a respectful "I will leave you to that" look, she excused herself and disappeared in the woods. She walked until the cries of the kids were not audible anymore and only then did she settle down for a nice, well-deserved - and most importantly - undisturbed nap.