Sun Mote Copse Teeny tiny aquamen

@Elwood 

Not too far from the lively Blackthorn residence there was a naturally formed pond - once there had been a sinkhole that had gradually filled up with water, plants and other life forms. The water reservoir was not very deep, now and then puppies (or Elfie specifically) would seek a refuge there from the heat. Or be taught to swim under adult supervision. 

Being on his way to the very important four-month milestone, Elfie thought that it was very important for him to establish his independence early. Whenever there was a chance, he would sneak away (but remain close enough to hear people calling him) and do little exploration missions on his own. Today he had come to the pond, ready to drink, when he noticed something very peculiar about it.

There on the surface he noticed thousands of little, moving black dots with tails, that did not scatter (like fish did) even, when the boy put one of his forepaws inside the water to touch one of them.  "Hey," he crouched down, and scooted as close to the water edge as possible. "Who are you?" he asked.

Inspired by my mother's pond, which is annexed by thousand tadpoles at the moment. Photo reference - https://pixabay.com/photos/tadpoles-pond...gs-338628/

Life had settled into something of a routine after Wildfire's death, as it always did after something big happened. Elwood and the others could still feel the hole that she had left behind, but they were adapting to their new normal. This included the congregation of puppies residing in the den of the Blackthorn matriarch and patriarch -- their own four children were growing like weeds, as were Elfie and Weejay. The puppies all spent more time out and about, earning their newfound independence, which meant that the adults were often kept occupied with various adventures.

Today, Elwood had been keeping an eye on Elfie from a distance. He had seen the boy "sneaking" away, but hadn't tried to stop him; he was getting to be old enough to negotiate his immediate surroundings without a parent or grandparent hovering overhead. And when he did move to follow his red-headed grandson after a few minutes, it wasn't to bring him back -- it was to see what he had discovered.

The youth was peering into a nearby pond, studying the myriad of tadpoles that skimmed across its surface. Approaching, Elwood said, "Those are baby frogs," and knelt down next to Elfie.

The tadpoles surrounded his paw right and after a while there was an odd ticklish feeling on his skin as the frogs-to-be tried to munch their way through it. Elfie pulled his foot out the moment he heard his grandfather's approach and turned to greet him with a smile and wag of his tail.

"Are they?" he asked. "They look nothing like them," he told, focusing back at the tiny tailed creatures. Some of them had flocked around a piece of leaf that had fallen in the water, reminding a grotesque variation of the sun. "They ain't even got four paws," he said.

Elfie made a series of astute observations about the tadpoles -- namely, that they didn't look anything like frogs, especially because they were missing some critical limbs. Elwood nodded, watching as the squirmy little beings congregated around a leaf, their bodies and tails pulsating with movement.

"You're right, they don't have any legs -- yet," he replied. "See their long tails, though? When they get bigger, their tails will get smaller and their legs will grow." The transformation was kind of surreal, but in a way, it reminded Elwood of his children and grandchildren -- it was hard to match the potato-like puppy blobs that they once were with the youths and adults they had become.

Learned a new thing about tadpoles last week - not only they can become cannibals, they are not opposed on "eating" anything that falls in the pond. Be it grass stalks, bread, wood and... *drumroll* a drowned mouse. One had fallen in the pond and my mom fished it out, but by the looks of it, they would have eaten it in time. And there you are thinking about, how harmless and toothless frogs are... :D

"That does not make sense," Elfie replied after thinking about the statement and casting a glance at his own tail. It had not got any shorter, quite the contrary. And his legs had grown longer as well. So, why did different rules apply to him and tadpoles? Weren't they from the same stock? He thought about these complex things, but was unable to word them properly.

"Why?" he asked then.

Oh wow! Looks can be deceiving!

Elwood bit back a smile at Elfie's declaration. He wasn't wrong -- it didn't really make much sense, but there were a lot of things in nature that didn't. And, unfortunately for the inquisitive pup, Elwood didn't know why. He suspected it had something to do with their ability to swim, and considered saying that. But that was a boring answer, wasn't it? He was a grandpa, after all, and grandpas are supposed to be extra fun.

"Well, they need to have really long legs because that's how they jump all the way up to the moon," he said, carefully schooling his expression into one of utmost seriousness. "And if their tails stayed too long, they would just get in the way."

That was an interesting theory. Elfie was a bit skeptical about the small guys being actually able to jump all the way to the moon - it was located above the treetops after all, but he liked the idea. So, what if... he took a good look over his shoulder at his tail, wiggled it a bit and then let it rest. 

"So, if my tail falls off, I will be able jump just as high as well?" he proposed his idea to Elwood. "Can you take it off and store it somewhere and then put it back on again?" this line of thought was more exciting than the last one. How cool would that be?

Elwood watched as Elfie craned his neck to examine his own tail. He could almost see the wheels turning inside the boy's head, and knew that whatever he said next, it would be interesting. And it was -- Elfie wondered aloud about his own ability to fly if his tail was removed, and then asked his grandfather to take charge of said removal.

"You know, I've never tried it -- so I don't know if it will work the same for us, since we're wolves. But we can certainly try," he said. "I'm not sure the best way to take off a tail, though. How do you think we should do it?" he prompted.

Elwood seemed to like the idea Elfie had proposed and this made the boy's heart swell in pride. There were all the signs of admiration for his grandfather already there and over time he would come to idolize him the way his own father would never inspire him. Grandad was smart, kind and what was important, he was not moping in sadness or being overly protective to the extent of becoming intrusive in Elfie's personal space and generally annoying. 

"I think we can bite them off, but it will hurt a lot. Pox bit me once," he looked down at his tail and there was a furless patch there. "And it was painful. Maybe that's not it. Maybe we need wings! Like birds!" he came up with another idea.

The boy first suggested that Elwood use his teeth to remove his tail, but quickly realized the repercussions, revealing that he had previously been bitten by Pox. Elwood followed his grandson's gaze to the little spot on his tail that was missing a chunk of fur, and winced in sympathetic apology. Elfie didn't seem bothered by the fact that Pox had used him as a chew-toy, though; that wasn't the point of bringing it up.

No, instead he continued to think out loud about how to achieve his goal of jumping high in the air. Next, he proposed wings, earning a nod from Elwood. That was a good idea -- now how should they execute it? "I think making wings would be less painful than biting off your tail," he agreed. "What can we make wings out of?"

Elfie had half-hoped that at the suggestion of making wings Elwood would tell him, how to do it. Wraen, whenever she visited the children, had a story up her sleeve almost about everything. Ask her about a grain of sand - there would be tale, how it got there. Ask about a missing tooth - she would tell about a tooth-fairy that collected the milk-teeth of puppies. And so on.

So, now challenged with the task of thinking of things for himself, Elfie was a bit baffled at first. Then he tried to do it, fidgetted on the spot, scratched behind one ear, then the other and ended up with absolutely nothing. "I don't know," he admitted defeated. "Bird look different than me. Maybe I can't fly at all."

Elwood could see the gears turning inside Elfie's head as the boy contemplated his options. He ultimately admitted defeat after a few moments of consideration, and the disappointment on his face made Elwood feel bad for just a minute. But their fun surely wasn't over yet!

"Well, you might be right. I don't think wolves can actually grow wings and fly, unless there's some secret that I don't know about," he replied with a frown of his own. "But! Do you know what your imagination is?" he proposed in the next breath, hoping to salvage the situation with a bit of pretend play if Elfie would take his bait.

"But you know everything," Elfie declared it as one of the life's big truths. And if there was something Elwood did not know, then it was not worth knowing either. He would be surprised to find out that in few months he would consider that the old people, his dad included, knew nothing about life at all. But that difficult teenage phase is just around the corner, we are not there yet.

"What is it?" he asked, having not burdened his developing gray cells with such long and complex vocabulary yet.

Elfie's protest brought a smile to Elwood's face. He wished he knew everything -- even after six years on this earth, and almost five of them spent here in the Teekon Wilds, he had a wealth of knowledge on many subjects but was still far from being privy to the deepest, darkest secrets of life. But it was a testament to childish wonder and innocence to hear Elfie proclaim that his grandfather was that wise, and it warmed his heart.

"Your imagination is in here," he replied, first tapping Elfie's forehead with his paw, "and here." He then poked the boy gently in the chest, indicating his heart. "With your imagination, you can pretend to be or do anything. So even though I think we've figured out that wolves can't fly, you can pretend to, if you want."

With that, he suddenly leapt away from his grandson, taking a few large, graceful bounds. "Like this! I'm flying!" he said, demonstrating with as graceful of a pirouette as his old joints would allow.

Elfie still had a bit difficult time grasping abstract concepts and term imagination was one of them. He did not fully understand things that he could not see or touch or taste, but could exist. He rolled his eyes to see his forehead (good luck with that), then peered down at his chest (no easy task with a long snout) and finally turned to glance at his side. He wiggled a bit, because the word sounded as something that would make a rattling sound or slosh, but nothing happened. 

"Pretend? What's that?" he asked, because this was yet another word in the glossary that did not yet have a feasible explanation. "You are not flying, silly," he told his grandfather, giggling merrily at the performance. "You are... are... walking funny," he concluded, because he had not yet met a dancing wolf either. "Are there birds that do not fly?" he asked then.

The boy called his grandfather out quickly on his comical movements, after asking for an explanation of the word "pretend." Elwood didn't stop careening about, but rather continued to leap and twirl (although it probably looked more like he was just flopping) as he answered. "Pretending is when you act like something you're not," he said between hops, circling back towards Elfie.

"So I'm pretending to fly even though you think it just looks like I'm walking funny. You can pretend however you want -- so you might look different pretending to fly than I do," he explained. Elfie's train of thought led him to ask if there were birds that were unable to fly, and, finding that he was starting to run out of breath, Elwood paused this time when he replied. "Yeah, there are some birds that can't fly -- there are some that live where it's really cold, and they swim instead of fly, and there are other birds that are just so big they can't get up in the air!" he panted.

"Are they still birds, then?" Elfie asked, because in his mind any avian was a synonym to air-borne. He had not encountered the swimming weirdos Elwood had mentioned or those that preferred terrestrial life to one up in the trees or in the sky. 

"Or they pretend to be such?" this question came a moment later. And, if that was true, where there other animals that pretended to be, what they were not. For instance - pretend wolves? They looked like ones, but they weren't really?

Elfie's first question was pretty standard, but he followed it up with one that made Elwood chuckle. The boy was certainly catching on to the concept of "pretend," even if Elwood hadn't anticipated that particular connection. But he had a point -- if birds could fly, but penguins could not, didn't that make them pretend birds?

"They're still birds, but you're right, they do seem like they're just pretending if they can't fly," he replied. "It can be kind of confusing -- but pretending is really just for fun. Is there something else you'd like to pretend to do?" he asked, having finally caught his breath after finishing his acrobatics.

"Umm... I don't know," Elfie shrugged. He did not feel all too right about this pretending thing. It did look fun, but it somehow went against the grain of something very fundamental about his being. He did not know that frankness about his feelings and opinions about others would be a defining trait of his in the future (and surely burdensome and annoying to others), but he voiced his opinion already. Innocently enough though. "I prefer the real thing," he told his grandfather and smiled at him.

Maybe you can conclude in your next post and we can have a new thread?

:)

"I prefer the real thing," Elfie concluded, and Elwood couldn't fault him. He had always been more logically-minded himself; it was only once he became a parent and a grandfather that he had started using his imagination more. "I have an idea, then," he said, and beckoned Elfie to follow him. "Let's go do some real swimming," he invited, and grandfather and grandson set off together toward the river.