Swiftcurrent Creek i'm in your back pocket, take me out when you get curious

forward dated to the 30th-ish

with each new day came a stride bigger than the last. i mean, not literally. despite daily practice Tiercel still couldn’t command her stocky limbs for anything; she negotiated the terrain of their den in the manner of a ginned up baboon, and was very intimately acquainted with the laws of physics.  

recently, her favorite thing to do was orchestrate an entire symphony of growls and yips and yowls. only as of late could she be an audience to her own concerts (and boy did it ever need a proper choirmaster), but she'd been appreciating the vibrations alone against her throat for some time now. she was particularly keen on the juddering sensation whenever she growled and took every opportunity to tune her instrument, trying to prolong the resonance of its effect. even while nursing, she would compose small rumbles that made each gulp burble and percolate through her jowls and she would then smack her mouth like a connoisseur savoring a lush wine.  

the alien was developing all her senses rather rapidly. by day twenty, she was able to recognize her mother’s milk-heavy scent and if she got so much as a whiff, would begin squalling tirelessly until there was a teat placed directly in her mouth. 

a week later, her ears, newly unfurled, revealed the enrichment of a soundtrack to her world. as she lolled under the heat of the sun their wilted ends swiveled like dowsing rods towards every murmur coming from the forest--gossipy birds, the babbling creek, the skirr of squirrels as they chased eachother from tree to tree. it was all faint, still, but she had little else to do except eavesdrop on the goings-on of Swiftcurrent Creek.

his love of music had not abated, merely been muted by the events of the past several months. mahler found it renewed in the trilling of birds and the gentle trickling of the stream, ambience to replace the rustle of sand and the clash of ocean upon stone. he had kept his distance from her since their last meeting, but helplessly followed her trail today, unnerved by his own curiosity.
a densite — mahler's ears swept forward with a vague understanding of what had occurred before he arrived in swiftcurrent. it was unlike the man to feel jealousy; he did not experience its cold glissade at this moment, but rather an overwehelming fascination. something not quite tender, but tempered with warmth. yet he did not approach; he held himself away some distance away, muscles tightened with anticipation of a white-fanged flush.

she had serenely sprawled across the breadth of warm earth, belly-up with all four gams spread eagle in a fairly unladylike way as she bathed under the sun. it was tough being a middle class kid, but Tier handled it with dignity and grace despite a great amount of adversity.

Mahler was quiet as a lamb, so his progress through the shadows slipped easily under the radar of untrained ears. there was only slight improvement in smelling things, but all the forest-scent coalesced and he didn’t carry an offensive enough odor to bid her diligence, either. at any rate, the junebug did not stir. the crescending drone of cicadas in the trees kept her intrigue—the sound was soothing, almost reminiscent of the sounds of her mother’s womb; it was easy to drowse. 

well, easy until nature got handsy. a fat little honey bee bumbling past her head just as her lashes languorously fluttered open was all it took to disturb the peace. when the yellow drone intersected with her unfocused gaze Tiercel jerked upward to right herself, alarmed, though the struggle was real for the second it took to get her rear-end to catch up with the escape velocity of her front-end. whatever, butt, meet you there. situating her getaway sticks beneath her, she scrambled in reverse to "flee" from the UFO sighting/harmless arthropod. 

in doing so she demonstrated a phenomenon now called panic fueled progress—this was the most ground she’d ever covered using the proper mechanism intended for movement and clearly all it took to knock the lazy out of her was a healthy fear of bees.

taking a few gulping strides, she tumbled back into the switchgrass with a squeal. her behind did meet her there, coming in clutch by sailing over the k-point of her landing and sending her tail over teakettle. the pup inscribed a long face-shaped track in the dirt that led to the base of a tree where momentum had deposited her.

mmm yes, a real child prodigy we have on our hands. 

once again, there was no parent around to put on a show for, so at first she was ominously quiet... and then the adrenaline of her misadventure wore off and she did the math in her head and figured this was probably worth crying about regardless of the turnout, because the landing hurt and the abrupt conceptualization of mortality was actually kind of a lot to take in.

thoroughly shaken up, the child let out that telltale, keening sound (evocative of a tornado siren, really) that notified everyone within earshot that their ears were about to be shot.

while mahler enjoyed the awareness that he was an observational creature, he had somehow failed to observe the child napping in the sunlight. or perhaps he had seen her, but had opted in the moment to suspend his processing of why there was a very young cub outside what he presumed to be wylla's door.
this carefully arranged bubble met its end with the pinprick of sudden and frenzied movement that brought him into the open, closer, with a flare of concern he had not before felt. and when the small thing experienced an ungainly sprawl in the dirt, mahler beheld its small dirty visage; charcoal auds swept back at the pregnant keen that suddenly began to wail from the little throat.
the musiker's jawline clenched; he had spent an indeterminate amount of time keeping from his mind's eye the memory of his own children, but they had reemerged at the sight of this pup's milkfat body. it was with half-resisted, heavy steps that he approached, tail flagging at his hips; the brute dropped to his belly and inched tenatively toward the girl until his muzzle was within touch-distance of one tiny forepaw.

her current perspective was contained to the swaying, crown shy treetops above, so when she perceived the approaching footstep of Mahler reverberating through the ground against her back, she was certain it was that lousy bumblebee coming to finish her off. 

there was a lapse in her outcry as she peddled her legs through the air to recalibrate the flaw in her bearings, namely the upside-downiness of it all. she emitted a small grunt and resumed the small cries as her legs kicked ineffectually through the air—where was that progress fueled by panic when a girl truly needed it? 

out of nowhere her kicking efforts were compensated in the form of contact with something solid. thup. Tiercel froze, her elaborate panoply of loud shrieking cries softened to a hum. her nails flexed and pushed against his muzzle, the balls of her feet pressed against his snout with relief easing through her as they encountered the familiar cushioning of mom.

except not mom. sniffling, ready to really make a production of her recent trauma, Tier shifted to an angle that afforded her a good look at the face looming at her. she scented the air, no milky heartnotes could confirm the identity of her refuge. blearily screwing up her blue eyes to meet the lilac ones staring back, it became abundantly clear that mmmmmmmmmmmmnope this wasn’t the mom she'd come to know. 

nice try, you can’t use stunt doubles in parenting.

Tier huffed a few trembling mewls, but she wasn’t panic-stricken by the presence of this stranger like she was the sight of a bee, and she didn’t feel the urgency to get away from him. you know, the reverse of stuff you wanna teach your kid. 

cooing, the child batted at the whiskers of the creek wolf’s muzzle, but her gaze continued fixating on the color of his eyes. it was a color she would later find replicated in catnips and lilacs and bruised skylines, but there was something so mesmerizing about seeing a color for the first time that she would simply stare quietly at him until he broke the spell.

he had tensed in response to her touch, but as her small pawpad moved over his nose, as her curious crooning began, and the seadark blue of her eyes met his, the man found himself uncoiling. mahler fit himself more comfortably against the ground, now vulnerable to any punishment that might catch him unawares.
the natural cadence of his blinking slowed, as he did not wish to frighten her, the gargoyle studied the downy contours of her face, remembering with faint uneasiness how his sons had been; curious. and his daughter. perhaps had she lived —
swiftly pulling his mind away from the treacherous pathways that dipped into such a specific hall of memory, the dappled creature lifted his muzzle slightly to scent the child's crown. the sun had grown warm upon his dark flanks — mahler remained helplessly enthralled, and his plume began to sweep across the ground behind him.

fortunately for Mahler, the babe’s hormonal mother had trudged away to scream into some bushes or something not long before he arrived. when the subtle traces of tension at last dispersed from his frame, she was instilled with the confidence to effloresce into her curious nature.

she might learn another day that maintaining eye contact with an authority figure was demonstrable of impertinence, but for now, it intimated the small but mighty spirit of inquiry within her. as his mind was cast back by the summons of an erstwhile fatherhood, Tiercel unfolded herself from the origami of her legs and unsteadily found her feet, shaking her ears slightly when the tender graze of his muzzle passed over her brow.

she began clambering upon his snout, scrawny tail whisking her thighs as she went about  her enterprise in an entirely graceless manner—all in an effort to get a better view of the flowers mantled there. ”oOooOoer,” she crooned, jousting her head unnervingly close to his eyeballs and extending a paw to boop the lashes framing them... assuming he didn't immediately shiver her off like a mosquito.

the man's first reaction indeed was to toss her gently from his muzzle; mahler armed himself against such instinct, gaze narrowing to slitted lavender as her miniscule paws played 'round his lashes. the musiker's delight in such things grew tenfold at the child's vocalization; carefully he made an aural study of it.
"obacht," the variegated beast crooned back in a low rumble to her small ears. "oooooobacht." it was perhaps the most foolish sound he had made in all his life, and mahler intoned it again for the simple seeking of her repition or laughter. 
it was then that one of her batting toe-sets glanced cunningly into the corner of one lilac eye; he gave a startled and pained harumph! as he flinched involuntarily. the charcoal slope beneath her small body dipped toward the earth in some sort of unfair and sudden response to her babyish perambulation.

like a barnacle clinging to a humpback whale, she held fast to her station, anchoring herself with one hind-leg propped on his nose and the other gripping the exposed root of the tree. 

her ears swiveled attentively when he lowed in his native tongue, her eyes widening in intrigue and then crinkling into slits as a giggle welled in her chest. ”oooaaaaaaa!” she sang out, trying to mimic his command over entertaining phonetics. 

in a moment of remiss, she jabbed him with her digit and triggered a flinch reflex. as his snout dipped, Tier slid backwards on the slope and was deposited abruptly on the ground. ”uf.” she grunted, visibly alarmed by the plonk of her rump against the unyielding buttress of the rootstock. 

she took a moment to contemplate the series of events and rate her experience, pondering if the sensation warranted waterworks. her blue, fast-blinking gaze flicked up to Mahler, looking for a cue from him; do we cry now? she awaited his feedback with rugose brows.

a grown and healthful adult wolf, mahler neverthless had been seemingly born without the ability of expression. therefore, he watched the child slip from her perch upon his muzzle to the ignominy of earth-smacked hindquarters with nothing beyond a slight widening of his eyes to evince he had taken stock of her predicament.
the soot-grey muzzle dipped; mahler feathered his breath over her velveteen ears and along her nape, attempting in his silent and careful movement to reassure the girl of her safety in his presence. the croon that had previously stemmed from her small throat was one of music, low notes; the wretched thing had not forgotten his need for composition in the face of arriving to the creek.
mahler wished to hear it again — when the babe had, with hope, not broken into a crescendo of her own, he overturned one large paw to reveal the scarred texture of its underside. "keine tränen, entlein." the gargoyle muttered with approximate warmth. she could not understand him; the language itself stuck in his craw with disuse, but all the same he found pleasure in the clipped tones.

want to wrap up? we def need more of these two

his teutonic murmur made the fat blobs of forthcoming tears renege on their imminent debut, her head tilting up at him with rapt interest. the words imparted didn’t graft to any mechanisms of recognition nor would they be retained for later recollection, but the way his gruff timbre shrouded each consonant both riveted and thrilled her and she screeched with another giggle, kicking her legs in indiscriminate directions from uncontainable glee. her glassy eyes emitted a joyous gleam as they cast towards Mahler’s overturned paw, tracing the scarred tissue with childish disregard before glancing back up to him with another coltish flail of her paws.

ending and fading SORRY <3

she was aesthetic, mahler decided, from the small comfort of her paws to the cubvelvet of her fur. fragrant with wylla's scent, of course, but insistent on an autonomy, and her looming companion had begun to take stock of its buds. a smile curved his lips then, rare for its depth and the length of time for which it lingered on his features; a bow reserved ironically for a being so small she perhaps would not notice.
in time, mahler rose gingerly and lowered his muzzle toward her own with a reassuring rumble that he would indeed return. with a toy, he decided, glancing back along one thickly-furred shoulder before he pressed into the surrounding shadows and was departed. he had incurred wylla's wrath far too recently to wish it upon his head again.