Swiftcurrent Creek your mommas a true beauty, butt makes me weep, i call it a boo-hooty

AW but also phone-homing the mothership @Wylla

life for a small-fry didn't get much sweeter. she mustered in as the youngest member of the pack and nothing was expected of her beyond the simple act of thriving, and what a cake walk that was when you had the essence of life on tap. every need was succored by the warm being that cocooned her.

Tiercel's form rummaged in the mussed-up fur of Wylla's armpit. so far, her brand-newness drew little interest from the outside world, though occasionally a bracing gust of wind visited them. life on the other side of the womb was stimulating enough without an extra social onus placed on her, so there was no love lost between her and the paparazzi. 

the vast affluence that accompanied being the Only Child: still supremely good. day two... three? and a pot belly was already forming from the sheer volume of milk she managed to put away. an absence of competition at the trough made her transformation into a pig a sensationally straight-forward process, and when she wasn't working on that project, she was hammering away at her second one: sleep as much as possibly possible. 

who estimated sleep by 40 winks, anyway? Tiercel was easily outperforming by roughly 595 winks. that was also a piece of cake when your eyelids are glued together and there isn't a slew of other hobbies to select from.

wink number 596 was underway presently--pretty milk drunk, the babe reclined against Wylla's back foot, her paws splayed from her fat little chest as she aired out her milk-encrusted belly.

No one had prepared Wylla for how boring being a new mother was. Maybe it would have been different had there been more than one pup, but there was almost nothing entertaining about What The Fuck. The kid ate, causing her pain. The kid slept, boring her. The kid occasionally made a rare noise, but it was nothing that Wylla found amusing or cute yet. So far, she was struggling to connect with her child and didn't know of any way to improve the situation. She felt a strong drive to keep her safe, but that was all. Nothing she would call love.

Could she ever love another being again? She had loved Ingram more than anything and his death had sundered the part of her that might have been capable of extending it to others. She wished it had been someone else. Even Lycaon; their connection had been tenuous at best what with their long separation. Even her. She would rather have died than be left behind to pick up the broken pieces of herself.

Tiercel was sleeping by her foot, but Wylla was going stir crazy, so she grasped the child by the scruff of the neck, lifted her, and carried her out of their small den, which smelled of mildew after a recent rain storm. The pup was way too young to be outside but Wylla desperately needed to get out, so she settled on the grass, tucked the tiny cub into the space between her armpit and her chest for warmth with a swift lick across her small face, and gazed out into the woods as a cool breeze blew by.

things had just become less-than-copacetic. she was unhappy with being displaced from the lull of sleep and furthermore, the creature comforts of their musty lil bungalow. the babe couldn’t smell squat yet anyway, so her ignorance to the fact that their dwelling reeked of an aesthetic blogger’s eau de toilette (read: worms, humidity, and wet pine needles) made her even less biddable to the notion of fresh air. 

besides, a bit of mold never hurt anybody, oui? she had built up a tolerance during incubation, what with all the mushroom caps Wylla helped herself to amidst gestating her bundle of Oh Fuckin’ Joy.

even though she had her own opinions, they clearly didn’t really matter in the end. i’m not highly susceptible to the elements, or dingos, or whatever, mom, don’t worry about it. do what do you want. her claws scritched against the earth as she vainly tried to latch on in protest, but she was taken into an airlift nevertheless. the most she could do was recruit a puny chirp to express her lack of consent and slew of defiance for the relocation effort. 

despite Wylla’s inner-angst about potentially never loving anything with all her heart and soul ever again, the emo bitch, Tiercel was just counting her blessings that they’d made it to day Now, her still undrowned in a bathtub. any monologuing could take a rain check.

for now, they made a brief trek to the threshold of their den—well, one of them was lugged there—and settled somewhere outside the entrance. the only change Tier could perceive in her realm was the dewiness felt on her skin as she was positioned in Wylla’s underarm, and instead of accepting it all without a fuss, she tried to dodge the lash of tongue with an uncoordinated swivel of her head, which resulted in her clamped ear getting a wet-willy. 

ugh.

she wriggled fitfully, migrating from where she was placed to as far as her nubs could take her, which was generally just mostly upwards. she hustled as quick as she concievably could before the Tower of Strength would inevitably take notice of the population’s very slow attempt to colonize Butt Megalpolis.

This kid couldn't seriously appreciate one thing in life. Who didn't love fresh air? What The Fuck apparently didn't. It took the tyke all of two seconds from the time they settled into the grass to start squirming around. Wylla tried to ignore it at first, determined not to let this new addition ruin her life like she was bound to do, but when Tiercel somehow managed to reach up to her shoulder, she decided enough was enough.

"Seriously, fuck off," she muttered to her daughter, brushing her with a swipe of her chin back down into her arms. "Just sit still and enjoy the weather, would you?" Well, how was she to know that enjoying the weather wasn't exactly something that days' old pups did? What The Fuck was in no danger as far as she could tell, so to make her point, she planted one paw on the babe's back and lightly squished her down so she couldn't go for another climbing sesh.

enjoy the weather. pfffft. what kinda nonsense. 

just as she’d almost crested the summit of Wylla’ shoulder—with some unprecedented strength summoned from her puppy-nodes, gotta hand it to her—the little termite was jostled off by some tectonic activity. in reality, she was rolled off by the deliberate whisk of a chin, falling stiff-legged much like an electrocuted koala would off a tree. there was no roughness in measures taken to supplant her exactly back where she started (this time, upside down), huff, but…. 

that sure was some very rude seismic energy coming from her mountain and a new emotion that hadn’t been experienced yet burbled troublingly in the small black cauldron. frustration. she was given a few seconds to struggle back to an upright position, ready to re-start the expedition, when the weight of something miiiiighty inconvenient bore down on her back. Tiercel was held in abeyance by this gesture, at first because she was stunned that such a thing had happened, and then because despite her wiggliest stirrings she couldn’t seem to work her way out of this… this straight-jacket. what. a. setback.

double huff. no, get ready for it…. TRIPLE huff! that was one too many huffs. her brow was severely furrowed, and the frustration stick of dynamite detonated in the form of a whispering mewl. probably the smallest noise ever but to be fair she was pretty disadvantaged simply due to the fact that her lungs were being CRUSHED!!!

and oh boy, throwing tantrums sure burned through a lot of energy. she didn’t have the calories for a climb and a snit. 

WTF’s tummy rumbled a bit, and with her fuse of disgruntlement all but a faded cherry-wick, she forfeited her decision to emigrate and decided that instead of that, she’d best refuel. unable to shift, the pup instinctively opened her mouth and expected a teat to magically be present. instead, she began her unavailing slurp upon Wylla’s toe.

Clock, while knowing that Durnehviir had had puppies despite him not yet knowing her on a personal level, had not known anything about Wylla's pregnancy. He had briefly met the prickly female down by the river the day Ishara joined the pack, and his first thought had been something along the lines of, :what did I do to make her so annoyed at me?: Clock, like many young wolves, had yet to understand that he was not so important as to be able to elicit certain behaviors out of others. Some wolves were just bad-tempered.

And so, when Clock passed nearby and saw Wylla muttering and fussing at something on the ground, his first instinct was to make himself scarce. As he made to scuttle off, however, he heard the little thing Wylla was handling emit a small squeal. His grey ears tipped curiously at the sound and his eyes swiveled over his shoulder to take another look at what it was the old wolfess had... His steps slowed when he saw the little creature sucking at Wylla's toe. It was a puppy. Entranced, Clock halted his forward motion and stood there, his head over his shoulder peering at the tiny black thing. He had never seen a puppy before, only heard about them. It looked like a vole, but somehow he had no predatory instinct to hunt it.

Wow. Are all kids this retarded? wondered Wylla as she stared down at her precious bundle-of-fuck-this-I'm-out. The single-mindedness of a child would be a welcome reprieve from real life, she decided, as her daughter once more gaped her gummy mouth wide and sought out a food source. Too bad Wylla didn't have any magical boobs on her chest to fulfill Tiercel's hopes and dreams with. It would just have to wait.

She'd missed the memo about babies having their own schedule that waited for no one. Sue her.

She was too preoccupied with Tiercel to notice Clock's arrival until some moments had passed; when her focus panned outward, she nearly jumped out of her skin upon realizing someone else was there. A typical mother wolf might have responded very unfavourably to a stranger watching her baby so intently, but Wylla was neither typical nor very nurturing. She was just a little young, a little immature and a lot self-centered to be considered for this year's Excellent Mom award. Instead, she slowly unfolded her arms and pulled her paw away from her daughter to reveal her to Clock, her expression frozen somewhere between a proud mama's look what I made and a distraught teenager's god, you ruin EVERYTHING.

when her mother jumped, Tiercel jumped too. good thing Wylla hadn’t given birth to a rabbit or it’d have already died from the first of thirteen total heart attacks. no, the girl was a trace more intrepid than a rabbit, or passed muster anyway when it came to endurance of the heart, and reacted to the lurch with a stunned squeak instead of, you know, death. 

she had no way of knowing the reason her giver-of-life or whatever had startled was because a stranger had obtruded on their pic-a-nic. when she was no longer impeded by the palm on her back and instead presented to the aforementioned stranger like a platter of hors d'oeuvre, Tiercel immediately rolled over front and center, the tender flesh of her belly exposed to the mercy of whatever loomed above. 

there was no concept of mortality at play, the sun just felt real good on her tumtum and made the hunger slightly less pronounced for approximately two shakes of a lamb’s tail. her toe-tips twitched, all paws curled towards her core like bashful flower petals. her expression in contrast to Wylla’s was more like look at me, the epitome of Precious Moments and do I have trapped gas, or need to poop? stay tuned to find out.

He backed up a few paces when the mother finally noticed him gawking at her and her offspring like some tourist, but he stilled again when Wylla moved her foreleg to better show off the black bundle of fuzz. His amber eyes flicked cautiously from Wylla's to the young pup and then back to Wylla. He deliberately kept the muscles around his eyes soft, wanting his expression to be as humble and non-threatening as possible. The new mother seemed tense, maybe a bit irritated but also... proud? He turned his thin, gray body to fully face the two of them and leaned forward a little as his nose snuffled with eager interest at the pup. When it rolled over in complete surrender, he took a few tentative steps forward and kept a wary eye on Wylla as he inched forward. He hoped she would let him get close enough to get a proper sniff at this tiny new member of the pack.

As Clock leaned in to greet the pack's newest, the young mother scrutinized every line on his face for signs that he was suddenly going to turn aggressive. He could kill her baby in an instant, but then she could kill him in an instant, close as she was. Some little alarm bells dinged quietly to life in her head, but Wylla ignored them in favour of introducing Tiercel to the first random pack mate to happen upon her. After all, she was going to be raised among these wolves. Just because Wylla hadn't made any effort to socialize with and engage them didn't mean she wanted isolation and solitude for her daughter.

"Tier—" she started, and then her hoarse voice cracked and she coughed into the crook of her arm, sending a wave of breath sweeping over the sooty pup's down. Do you even know how inconvenient it is for your voicebox to live in a slightly moldy log and not exercise your vocal cords for days on end? Answer: extremely. "Tiercel. Her name."

she wasn’t at all aware of the strange nose looming towards her with the intention to sniff, or she definitely would have ripped ass the minute his nostrils tempted fate. however, being deaf, dumb, blind, and as of yet woefully incapable of such cunning or unladylikeness, Tiercel was a stalled vehicle between the lanes of her mother's giant paws.

the abruptness of Wylla's cough and ensuing sensation of heat trundling through her fur coaxed a lurch and the sudden ingathering of her extremities; the very same startled manner a rolypoly bug would react to a child’s finger poking its armored exoskeleton. really? do you mind?

Clock was permitted a few more minutes of inspection before Wylla, deciding that Tiercel's flinch wasn't at all the product of her cough, tightened her forelimbs around her cub and gently ushered their pack mate away. Once he was gone she decided they'd had enough outdoors time, plucked Tiercel up, and returned the both of them to their musty dusty digs.