Bearclaw Valley With the thrill of a kill, vengefully, the engine will

Lucas reflected, as he basked in a cloud of pollen, on how much he loved flowers.

They came to the world without warning, bright little buds among the grass and explosive white clusters on the trees. It seemed to happen overnight to the pup, whose impression of time was warped—one day in the eyes of an imaginative child was five to a tired adult with too little time. One day there was only green in the valley, and the next, enticing white and light pink bulbs could be found around every corner. Lucas had done everything imaginable to the young flowers as they sprouted and grew: licked them, batted them around, chewed on them, pressed his ear delicately against them, listening for a song or a secret.

Then came the bees and the pollen. Presently the air was choked with wispy white fluffs that lodged in his nose and made him sneeze (but who doesn't love sneezing, amiright). Where they landed, minute sprinkles of yellow remained. The bees hummed busily around trees and occasionally around his ears, but they never bothered him even when he chased after them, giggling. Yep, Lucas loved spring and he loved the flowers. On his back in a cluster of them under the clear mid-morning sky, he thumped his tail joyfully on the ground and reached out a browning paw to gently touch a closed bud.

Piper always seemed to have an interest in what her brother was doing. It was as though his business was automatically her business. Perhaps it was a deeply rooted love for the round boy, or the light in his sparkling blue eyes, but she felt as though she was inclined to join him in each of his endeavors. As they had grown a fait bit older, their adventures were more appropriately moved outside of the den. It was nice to enjoy the heat from the sun and the whispers of the wind as it filtered through their stretch of the valley. Piper had never really been one to notice her surroundings – not the way Lucas had – but she did feel a particular giddiness in the new light that had graced their home.
 
On that particular day, she had set out in search of her larger brother with a nose to the earth and a hounding for his scent. She found him enjoying the peace of new flowers. His tail beat against the earth as he sat and reached a delicate paw toward a flower bud. Piper watched him for a moment with a curious expression before she trotted closer and called out in a singsong voice, “Luuuuu!”

He could stay there for the rest of his life and Lucas would be content. What more could a fat young pup ask for but a light breeze, the sway of pollen in the air, the murmuring of bees and the the heady scent of fresh buds all around? It was his own little heaven. The only thing missing was a strobe light and a bass drop. The former couldn't be found in nature but the latter was easy enough: his siblings interrupted him often enough to serve the purpose, and as his ears flicked up to the high note of Piper's voice, he knew it was time to get up.

But he didn't. He managed to lift his chin to his chubby, upturned sternum and lazily scanned the warped horizon until he spotted his bright-hued sister. "Hi, Pie," he said with a giggle, rolling arduously to his side and patting the ground with a humongous paw. "Preeeeelly," he insisted, injecting all his desire for his sister to enjoy the flowers with him into that singular drawl.

There were few things in life that caused the girl to feel euphoria, but the happy rolling of her brother’s stout frame was certainly one of them. Piper met him with twinkling little puppy eyes and she pranced toward his invite with far too much enthusiasm. Lucas was a delight, and Piper had never found a moment that she had disliked him (even though he had been a food hog. How else do you get to be so perfectly rotund?). It was a ride or die relationship that was blooming as they aged. 

Plopping herself down next to him and peering at his flowers with a curious sniff, Piper agreed that it was super pretty. She inched a bit closer and inhaled sharply, activating instant sneeze mode. She fired off like a semi-automatic rifle in the hands of an over-eager first time shooter. After roughly eight sneezes, she looked to her brother with watering eyes and smiled. “Prilly flower, Lu,” she mumbled with a thick tongue. 

Then, she hit the flower pipe again and exploded with another string of sneezes that shook her entire body. Damn, spring... 

Did you know some people are allergic to flowers? Lucas didn't. Piper's sneezing elicited a wild round of merry giggles that shook his entire paunch, because he was a fan of sneezing, too. There wasn't anything he wasn't a fan of thus far, except maybe Nunataq's authoritative actions at times, but only because she was still considered a visitor and it was bad manners. He reached out his tan-tipped paw to poke the flower once more and he chuckled again as its head bobbed on the stem.

"Wha' doin'?" he wondered, fixing his red sibling with a pleasant smile and curious eyes. Had she been up to some adventure before finding him here? Had Laurel taken her for a walk? Had she been spending time with the newcomers? Lucas enjoyed hearing about his siblings' days; earlier, Wyatt had told him about the eight legs he had squished and then tried to eat, and how gross it tasted. Lucas had kept his eyes peeled for eight legs ever since so he could try them, too, but he had yet to find even one.

After inducing several more sneezes, Piper looked to her round brother with watery eyes and a goofy little smile on her small face. She wasn’t certain if she enjoyed the sensation of sneezing just yet, but it was definitely something that made her little ears buzz for a moment. After the disorientation had worn away from her rusty frame, she peered at Lucas while he bapped against another flower with a smile. It was infectious to watch him play, and the young Redleaf girl was enthralled with joining him in everything that he did, only because he was so much fun. Wyatt always liked to chew on her ears, so she got sick of him a lot quicker.
 
“Seepin,” she answered his question with a heavy-lidded blink or two. Naps were always the best, of course, so she tried to squeeze in as many as three a day, or else she just wasn’t fit to venture out into the world. If she could have managed four, Piper would have been all the more thrilled by it. “Lu hungry?” Piper then asked him, feeling the familiar ache in the pit of her stomach that signaled she might need a little snack or two.

Conversational though the young chub was, Lucas still possessed an attention span that only suited users aged one to three, so he was already off on some other tangent in his head by the time Piper responded. As a result he had nothing to add and offered no other social cues for their conversation to springboard from. A back-and-forth exchange of about two seconds was all anyone could expect from him; he was much better at physically engaging others by dancing or tusseling with them than he was talking.

Good thing Piper was good at this, then. She offered another subject and Lucas paused, paw half-cocked toward the flower for another pat, to think about his answer. "No," he admitted, but then added, "maybe?" when his belly, motivated by the mere thought of food, pinched gently.

Piper’s attention span was ironclad in comparison to her brother’s. She had posed a question and she fully expected him to answer her, even if it took all morning. Her eyes danced over his round frame with a loving devotion, eagerly hoping that he would agree to the idea of food. Piper was not quite nearly as round as Lucas, but she had her fleeting moments of needing to eat that would not be ignored. Feeling the rumbling in her little belly, Piper knew that it was one of those times and she was craving the tasty crunch of an animal’s leg.
 
Rising up from where she was, Piper flagged her tail hard enough that she almost spun her rear end around like a top. Giggling, she reached out to boop Lu with her dark wet nose. A delicate smile had twined itself onto her leathery lips. “Kay get snek, Lu. Pie share wit you,” she informed him, uttering the words as though they were very serious (she was talking about sharing her food, after all; that was a big fucking deal). Then, the girl set her sights on where one of the dark wolves had hid some food for them and began to sniff with a waggling tail.

It took him a little longer to hoist himself to his feet thanks to his rotund belly and his flower-drunk stupor both, but Piper's cold nose on his cheek did rouse him. Rocking back and forth, Lucas rolled slowly over and then hopped up, tail whirling. He took a moment to shake out his thick furs, sending pollen flying and inviting forth two sneezes. Blinking dozily in the aftermath, the cinereous boy followed after his sister.

Finding food was something of a skill. Lucas could smell it easily under the musty scents of dirt and grass. This was born of his love for it—if there was food nearby, you could bet your bottom dollar Lucas would be able to find it. He joined Piper in sniffing around for the cache and when it was found, he began tapping his paws excitedly on the tamped earth. "Here!" he called, though no doubt Piper's own keen nose had already led her to it. Hunching his broad shoulders, the chubby pup began to scoop pawfuls of earth away from the pup's cache.

It took a moment and quite a bit of effort for Lucas to straighten himself out and clamber to his paws. It was amusing for the girl to watch, if only because she adored her brother so much. His bright stare was enough to cause her to waggle her rear in excitement and encouragement. There was nothing better than sharing her adventures with Lucas. More than this, she was eager that they were about to sniff out a snack together to quell the rumblings in her stomach.
 
Poking her nose around, Piper could scent the prey beneath the dirt but was not certain where it might have been hidden. She sniffed sharply, inhaling dirt and causing her to sneeze. A quiet squeak left her mouth at the tail end of her allergy attack. It was Lucas’ voice that pulled her from her thoughts and her searching. She had not been far, but she still had not quite hit the mark of the cache. She turned sharply and the Redleaf girl trotted toward her brother with an eager smile. Once there, she assisted him in digging away the dirt roof of the cache.

As the pair broke ground, Piper energetic as always and Lucas with his belly swaying heavily, the hunger that was uncertain before crowded into the forefront of his mind. By the time they unearthed the cache his lips were slick with saliva and his stomach was growling into his chest. He stooped to pull out the first thing he saw: a mouldy and decrepit leg of some creature.

It smelled gross and it looked gross, but Lucas was undiscriminating as he closed his mouth around it and gave it a playful shake, eyeing Piper mischievously. It left a weird film on his tongue and tasted almost as bad as it smelled, but for at least a little while he was able to ignore that in favour of flinging it around. Whether or not he'd be able to stomach actually eating it was another story.

The two pups dug away at the short roof that was over the cache. When they had broken through to the other side, Piper pulled herself back excitedly. Lucas was the first to dive in and search for what was inside. He pulled out a leg that looked a little worse for wear. The Redleaf girl made a face to suggest that it didn’t look to tasty before she watched him amuse himself with a little play. It was enough to make her laugh, watching Lucas swing around the nasty leg.
 
Feeling the rumble in her stomach, Piper poked her head back toward the cache with an interested squint. She locked sights with a vole that appeared relatively fresh, albeit small. Stretching herself out, she latched her teeth into the little body and reared up, flinging it into the air and over her back. Spinning, Piper watched as the prey seemed to linger in the sky for a moment before it plummeted back to earth in the grass. With a few big leaps and bounds, Piper was on top of it again, shaking it with her head.

The leg proved to be an ineffectual plaything; Lucas swung his head up a little too quickly and it fell apart, leaving only a scrap on his tongue while the rest scattered into the sky. The pup spat it out and laboured to rub his tongue over the thick fur on his chest, ridding himself of the remains and the taste alike. By then, Piper had taken a piece for herself and was fiercely shaking it.

A brief well of competitiveness rose up in his chest, but was quick to settle once more. He was only competitive in the sense of being a wolf and a predator, born to compete with others. As a person, he wasn't one to invite himself to someone else's belongings without consent, so though his eyes longingly followed the vole as Piper whipped it back and forth, he didn't barge in to tussle for it. Instead he waddled back to the cache, stooped down and dragged out a small bird that was much fresher than the leg he found before.

This, he proceeded to try to toss like Piper had, but it didn't go nearly as high. Being round as Lucas was did have some draw backs, like having a fat neck against which to bounce the back of his head, hindering his throwing momentum.

Piper enjoyed the tossing of her new play thing for quite some time before she turned her head to see what her brother was up to. He seemed to be attempting to make the same fun out of his meal. The Redleaf girl followed his movements with a smile that spread wide into a toothy grin as Lucas launched his find into the air and it fell down with a dull thud. She didn't see that it wasn't as good as her own toss, because she was more focused on the idea that her brother had joined her in the game she'd been playing. As if to signal this, Piper began to wag her tail behind her in rapid circles, swinging her rear around and around.

“Good t'row, Lu!”

Her yap was excited and full of encouragement. “'Nother?” she then inquired with a tilting of her crown. She wanted to see if she could find a mark in the background to judge just how high he had gotten it. Of course, this whole excursion had been planned in order for them to get food to eat, but she imagined that would come in due time.

It took him a few moments to relocate the bird; it went further horizontally than it did vertically, and landed somewhere near the base of a tree nearby. The chubby cub collected his fat rolls and lurched after the bird, laughing uproariously as he chased it down and pinned it with a fat paw. He leaned down to pluck several feathers from its breast, then perked up when Piper praised him and encouraged him to go again (or at least that's how he took it).

Gathering the bird once more in his jowls, the plump Arctic pup took several clumsy steps forward, then tossed back his head and let it fly. This time the bird went a little higher, but was flung backwards over his head into some bushes. Blinking owlishly, the piebald pup spun in a slow circle, trying and failing to spot where it went, and then asked as he turned back to his sister, "Is poofed?"

All in all, Piper had anticipated that her brother would manage to fling the animal into the air and it would dejectedly fall back down without much trouble. She kept a keen eye on Lucas as he raced toward his 'catch' and padded it with a thick puppy paw. Her smile did not flicker or fade as she waited for him to prepare himself. All of the anticipation was killing her, but when Lucas did finally bend down and fling the creature back up, she barked with delight.

Things did not go as planned, though.

Piper followed the trajectory of the prey animal as it zipped through the air and landed higher up than she thought possible in a thick bush. With shock written on her features, she wasn't sure she dared to move her sights from the dead plaything until her brother voiced his concern. It was then that the Redleaf girl turned her attention back to him and wagged her tail.

“You throwed it so far, Lu! Was like woooosh,” she said to him excitedly and made a motion with her muzzle in the direction that it had flown. “Lessee if we can gets it,” she then prompted with a nod.

For a second or two, Lucas was unnerved by the bird's disappearance. How was it possible that something he held in his maw a minute prior was just gone? The first time he had thrown it up with little horizontal force, so it had gone skyward and flopped back down. This time his aim had been off, he'd kept it in his teeth just a little too long, and flung it behind him. So his blue eyes lingered on Piper in the hopes she had witnessed its flight and knew where it was.

Her exclamation brought a smile to his plump face and his tail beat with pleasure at his hocks as he waddled back toward her. "Cool!" he breathed, wishing he had seen it himself. "Yours was cooler, Pi," he assured her, for she had thrown her vole much higher than he could manage or even really fathom at his age. He met her proposal with an over-enthusiastic bobble of his head and frolicked off in the indicated direction, where the bird was tangled up in the boughs of a bush. He didn't notice it there, though, and began to search on the ground instead.