Stone Circle a robin said: the spring will never come,

@Merrit @Arlette forward dated to Saturday (06/02)
mom & dad are always welcome too of course <3

On her twelfth day, the world was revealed to her. Keen's eyes opened, hazy puppy-blue in their newness, in the early hours of the morning. The chocolate-cloaked girl met the development quietly, solemnly; she studied the blurry shapes around her for some time without moving. The big warm food-sack she would one day know to be her mother was the first thing to catch her fresh eyes. She stretched out towards it, pushing tiny paws roughly into her mother's belly. It was a familiar sensation, though, and the pup was far more interested in new experiences.
She turned her attention to the smaller shapes beside her. Thing One and Thing Two; her siblings, though she recognized them only as blobs for now. Keen lurched towards the darker one, flopping clumsily with paws splayed and whacking her brother square in the face. Had she possessed the awareness, she might have felt bad— but she didn't, so she whined indignantly instead at the impact.

The young girl had survived until now. She was still small compared to her siblings but Arlette didn't know that. She wasn't aware how small or big she was. She was mostly focussed on staying close to the warmth around her and definitely making sure that she could reach any of the milk whenever she wanted. She often stayed close to the biggest source of warmth. There were some other sources giving off heat as well but they moved too often for her liking. She only used them when the steady one wasn't around for a bit.

Sometimes there was another steady one she could curl against but strangely she couldn't find any milk. So she registered that scent as the non-milk giver. Just like the other two that moved so much. They didn't give milk either. Which would only leave one scent and the girl made sure to nestle right back against the milk-giver.

Arlette's eyes hadn't opened yet. Her world was still dark around her. She didn't mind, she thought this was normal. She could sense were the others were and could smell them as well. All very familiar scents. The young female unknowingly was saved from the 'attack' her sister launched, for now. She felt movement but she just tugged herself more against the big warmth, feeling sleepy.

Unlike his pale sister, Merrit's eyes had opened. They'd opened the morning before. But it would have been a surprise if anyone knew that. Nearly the moment they had parted, he'd squeezed them shut, overwhelmed by this change and the sensory overload. No, he could tell quite fine, thanks very much, through feeling and taste to need anything else. The darkness was good, it was fine. He'd been there this long already, surely he could stay there for forever.

Except that his newfound eyes didn't seem to want to cooperate in staying closed when flying things thudded square against his face.

With a rapid flutter, he blinked and scooted away, gripped more by the fear of his eyes being open than he really was about whatever had thwack'd him. As much as he squeezed his eyes shut against the light and tried to keep them closed, they kept opening anyway - and even worse, keeping them open was almost easier than keeping them closed.

Upset peeled through him, and Merrit swung his head around to scour for whoever had caused this. Which didn't take him long. He knew that whine, and now, had a form to couple it with. A smear of brown, smudged against the dark. With a pitched and throaty whine, he pushed his paws toward the blur with a clumsy thrust, not really aiming for anywhere in particular, and with no darker intent than bumping her with a shove, a motion a kin to what was that for?

The responding prod inspired a quiet huff of indignance from the chocolate-furred girl. She turned toward the source and crawled to it this time, flopping herself across Merrit. Keen hadn't actually had a plan in mind, but whatever she might have thought to do was immediately forgotten as a realization struck her; Thing One was very warm.

This was good, very good. At her young age, the girl hadn't yet learned the value many things— but warmth was on that short list. Keen cooed affectionately, shifting and wiggling to get more comfortable; it didn't occur to her that this would be very uncomfortable for her brother. Nor did she realize that she was kicking Arlette in the process, albeit softly (even for a pup).

Arlette had been lightly slumbering when she suddenly got a kick. The girl squeaked in shock, mostly as a surprise rather than pain. The girl didn't really know what pain was. The white girl shifted and crawled away from the kick. Though then she realized that most of the warmth was gone. She shuffled forward again until she was nestled right against her siblings, or at least she tried. Sometimes she used her siblings as pillows. They were rather convenient to lie against. 

So unfortunately for Merrit, his sisters were ganging up on him. Though from Arlette's side it was mostly unintentional. She wanted to stay warm and since Merrit was bigger than her she tried to nestle herself against his face while being unaware that Keen was on top of Merrit. 

He managed to land his bop on Keen, but his gesture brought mixed results. Still confused with the overload of sensory information, Merrit found he couldn't shuffle fast enough to escape the surprise of his sister's body flailing toward him, and he tripped over his clumsy paws and toppled to the ground with a sideways roll, so that when Keen landed she draped across his side instead of his back, and so saved his nose from getting completely squished into the ground.

But even as he sighed and turned his face to catch the coolness of air, he was met with a giant blob of white, and when he breathed in surprise his mouth caught nothing but fur. His lungs seized with the obstruction and he tried to wiggle against Keen's motions to either loose her balance and slide her off, or somehow find a position where he could breathe again.

Yet despite his best efforts, he couldn't free himself from the persistence of his sister's weight. Merrit was stuck at this angle, and though he could find small bouts of air in the empty pockets between the ground and Arlette, an instinctive sense of panic settled into his chest. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. Very rarely did he make a sound, but his voice sounded now in shrill and throaty cries, muffled by the blockage posed by Arlette and shortened by his diminishing breath.

Paging @Valette or @Stark !

Valette lifted her head when she heard a squeak coming from her little ones. She nosed over them and noticed that it was Merrit who made the cry of help. She pushed Keen off him to then lift the dark pup with a light grip, away from the other two. She placed the baby on her paws and gave him a quick body check to see if he was alright. He only seemed... out of breath? Valette frowned and licked over his body to soothe him. Perhaps it was just a silly dream or something? Once she deemed him more than fine she just placed Merrit back with the others.

Keen became aware of her brother's struggles for only a few fleeting moments before her mother's intervention. A vague and altogether not very pressing sense of concern filled her. Worried as she was, though, she wasn't entirely sure what was wrong (no doubt if she could have known, she'd have cared more). She scrambled to move away nonetheless, only to feel indignant when she was pushed. A whine slipped from her.
In the next beat, she twisted around; she hadn't forgotten her brother yet. If she was able to reach him, she'd nose and knead at him, making soft noises as if to ask if he was alright. And then, if she could, she'd roll and wiggle herself to press close to his side, not wanting to repeat the scene from a few moments ago.

Arlette wasn't really sure what was going on but the female felt her brother being pulled from under her. She let out a whine in protest but soon found another warm body to snuggle against. The scent told her that it was her sister. The female wanted to snuggle against her sister and sleep but the whines of her brother made her lift her head. Did something bad happen? She wasn't entirely sure. Arlette couldn't really know that she and her sister had been at fault here. 

Rescue came swift, and he squeezed his eyes shut when he felt Keen's pressure lift from his back and Arlette's tender body move away from his mouth. The coolness of the den rushed his lungs, and he made no further noise, too focused on drinking in the air he hadn't been able to find just moments before. Merrit felt the grip of calm even before his mother drew her tongue across him, and he rested between her paws.

By the time he was placed back with his siblings, his infantile mind had forgiven whatever offence his sisters had rendered him. How could he do anything but that? The child had no concept yet of right and wrong, but he sensed the concern in Keen when she met him with whines and a gentle knead of her paws. Merrit rumbled a single, soft note to reassure her that things were okay and welcomed the warm press of her body against his side - though he did find his gaze ever watchful of the space before his eyes, not wanting a repeat of whatever had happened before.

Soon her sister was pressed to her other side, and Keen responded to her brother's rumble with her own soft noises of content. She shifted slightly to get more comfortable between them, twisting her head so her nose met Arlette's shoulder. Keen mouthed gently at her littermate in an early gesture of affection, then settled down to sleep. Merrit was alright now, so she felt safe enough to drift off; young as she was, the girl already knew what it was to care for her family, and did very deeply.