Moonspear a place to anchor

He steals away looks at the planes of his father's face. Even now, wrenched from him a coveted stick, does his sight fall upon the relaxed figure of his sire. In front of the den mouth, @Dirge lays, attention never straying far from his rambunctious children.

Since their first introduction, Dirge is a frequent presence. Not as ubiquitous as the Cerberus but frequent enough. Often he would come and go as he pleased, sometimes leaving for an hour or two before coming around again. Once night falls, he would disappear for the night...only to return the ensuing morning or evening.

There is now another set of eyes upon Moonspear's newest brood. This one, Atlas thinks, is easier to exist beneath. So he believes.

Pardoning himself from Vega's and Osiris' disagreement over who should chew on the branch in peace — a feud he had a paw in stirring up — Atlas ambulates on over to the reposed Alpha. Pausing four feet in front of his sire's outstretched limbs, Atlas does something unexpected: he looks Dirge directly in the eye with the scantiest furrow of his brow.

Now, Atlas does not understand things like rank. He does not understand that direct eye contact could be seen as a slight. However, he is not completely clueless regarding the heavy implications of looking at someone else in the eye. How vulnerable it makes him feels and how he usually withers beneath continued stares. Why just the other day he had locked eyes with @Hydra. It had been intense. The memory is still so fresh, he hurriedly tears his eyes away from Dirge in favor of his paws.

He does not understand why holding the gaze of one of his providers is so difficult. He can hold staring contests with any of his siblings, no problem. In fact, he enjoys doing so as it sometimes leads to instigations or some form of "what are you looking at?" But with adults, he can't do it. It is mentally onerous.

For a boy who is still becoming, Atlas views this as a weakness. A weakness that is fresh within him but has, thus far, amassed plenty of reflection. And though he is positive he can shoulder this strange, new weight, he cannot deny its burden in what should be a tranquil moment between father and son.

They were certainly all of different personalities, that much could be said. A constant whirlwind of motion that often dissipated as quickly as it came on, they all seemed to be at the height of action beneath his watchful gaze. For the most part, he hadn't had to play wrangler; the cubs seemed not eager to wander too far, not even when Hydra had left them in his company. This was hardly the first episode he had been alone with them, but it was comforting to know that they would not squall at her absence.

Of course, he knew that her sisters more than likely did not wander far away either, ever keen to watch and play sentinel to any sort of unsavory event that could have unfolded. He did not think much on these either, instead focused on the rousing squabble between son and daughter over a stick and how the other two took note of this, or perhaps how they wished to partake when the opportunity seemed high.

It was Atlas who seemed to tire of such fanfare first—Dirge felt his gaze meet his through the play, only to watch it tear away from him when he met that gaze curiously. It seemed to upset him, to have met his father's gaze, though it was hardly a threatening glare. Humoring, if nothing else—Hydra had described him as Atlas the Bold, after all. Gently, he let his tail sweep the dusty den entrance behind him, as though it would entice the boy to draw nearer. All was forgiven, nevertheless. Unlike his own upbringing, he wouldn't spurn the boy for his attempt. He was simply young, meant to enjoy it while it lasted.

The unexpected movement of a tail cuts through the crux of his worries. So long as his sire is at ease, it's not an issue. Atlas is more than happy to let those hefty contemplations go. Inevitably, some of them will stay but that is neither here nor there.

Enticed closer with a habitual puppy strut, he brings his nose before Dirge's and sniffs. It was the closest Atlas knew for a nonverbal hello though he was more than capable of speaking at this point. Not right now, though. This is enough.

Plopping over on his side, he observes his father's paws. The sight is nothing new but he wonders endlessly over how big they are. Bigger than his head, maybe! Atlas brings his mouth close to a tender digit. Fiendishly, he finds Dirge's eyes again while opening his maw and —

Awro-roo-ro, he playfully growls, amused. A ruse! A dastardly one, at that!

Though he would claim it easy, Dirge found it difficult not to marvel at the children. He had warmed to them far quicker than he had ever anticipated, or perhaps they had simply wormed their way into his heart. It was a rather unexpected development; he had never been one much for children in general. Yearlings, perhaps, if only because they were fully capable of thinking for themselves and expressing it as well as any experienced adult. But infants?

Well, perhaps to consider this lot fully infants was a bit much. They were clearly growing swiftly into something else, something more, and already he could spy the handiwork belonging to none other than Hydra in the way they thought through things. He combated this with his own behaviors, inclined in some instinctive reflex for them to push their boundaries much in the way that Atlas came to gnaw a toe. Had he felt like it—the playful growl pulled a smirk to his lips, and his head swooped low to meet the boy.

If Hydra would make them stalwart sentinels to stand all in a line, then Dirge would bestow them with a raucous design of his own. He gently returned the little growl with one of his own, but let it draw out into a soft howl. The volume was ever increasing, no doubt his perhaps the loudest, but the hint was getting across what he planned to do. Even with the stick firmly lodged in his mouth, he heard Osiris unable to avoid trying to join, and the others...?

He had no doubts they would too.

Hydra would surely beat knots on his head for this later.

He had expected something. Certainly not the low-pitched, beginner notes of a howl. Atlas wiggles frantically on the ground, coming to lean on his elbows. He thought such utterances reserved for more important matters than play. With the climbing tenor of Dirge's howl, he thinks such restrictions could be bent. Just this once.

One supple ear cups back to the shortlived whines of his brother. They grow in volume and frequency, ever striding to match Dirge's voice. Atlas does not fight the urge to sound off, either. The shrill noise only a whelp could produce builds within him until it eventually erupts from his yawning jaws. He throws his head back with the passion of it all, taken completely by the sonorous choir of his family.

Oh, Dirge. What have you unleashed?

A raucous hell, that was what.

It took no time at all, really, to unleash such a cacophony of voices. He halfway expected to see someone else come along to witness the ruckus and if they did then they were truly in possession of a mastery stealth. The stick was forgotten among the children along with any other passive antic to be had; he smiled at the gentle measures they took to literally disturb the peace.

Things had been quiet along the rocky, timbered slopes of Moonspear for too long. There was much to make noise about and he sought to find this, thinking perhaps somewhere down the line there would be others to join them. And as the calls tapered off and his mirth had yet to cease, he leveled off his gaze with Atlas.

"It seems you are finding your voice," he told the boy, "do you think your mother heard you?"

They continued for a time, chasing away mournful silence for a while. They eventually fell back into quietude. Atlas feels renewed, in a sense. Bolstered, he stands up and leaps for Dirge's chest with a diabolical chortle. He takes a mouthful of fur and munches it, mindful of teeth. He's not about to squander this good mood. Too bad his good mood meant slobber for papa.

Busy alternating between licks, tugs, and nibbles, Dirge's words nearly miss him.

Yeah, comes his noncommital reply between a mouth full of fur. 'N errbody else, too.

MAMA CAMEO.

Hydra was patrolling, diligently marking the borders. The sight of a fox too near for her liking set the woman into motion, and the end of that encounter was swift. After inspecting her immediate surroundings to ensure that no others were nearby, the woman plucked the limp creature off of the earth to take it home to her children for yet another lesson. Moving nearer to the whelping den, Hydra paused and stood alert upon hearing her mate howl. Ears pricked, she calmed when there was no note of something is wrong to be detected.

With a shake of her head, Hydra, vexed, could only conjure his name in her thoughts: Dirge... She imagined what he did was not to teach them a lesson, and her ear twitched upon hearing the voices of her children joining him. Her heart warmed, and her irritation was swept away thusly; Dirge loved their children, she knew, and would not do anything that would ever serve to cause them harm. This much she knew, and so Hydra dropped the animal she carried to answer the discussion she did not know they had. A low, sonorous howl came from her, and when her song ended she picked up the carcass she had dropped and continued on her way.

Hydra's call cut across the air on the heels of his son's muffled voice; a smirk crossed his features. They were right—she had heard them and answered accordingly in a note of solidarity. It went almost without saying that Dirge anticipated her asking him later just what he had planned on accomplishing by riling their children up, but he thought little of it now. The bridge would simply be crossed when they got there.

"It would seem you're right," he answered, batting him gently with a paw. "It's always good to practice your call. It's how we find one another, how we can call for help or to warn." He knew that she had told them here and there of the dangers of the world. They may have been predators, but even they were not limitless in their prowess, though certainly try did they.

Heeding his dam's call, Atlas issues a stifled roo-ooo into his father's plush fur before a paw knocks him away. He is quick is rasp those razors against the delicate pads of Dirge's paw. But otherwise, he is content merely to rub his teeth against some fleshy thing, though Dirge's accounts give him pause. Stretching, he rests one back paw on dad's shoulder.

Warn...For predators, right? An' outside woofs. He frowns. Woovs. He's saying it too fast. How did Hydra say it? Woolves. Bingo.

It was that awareness and no doubt the sharp intelligence bestowed to them from their parents that led Atlas to his reply, even when it was littered with the cumbersome tongue of a child. His answer appeased Dirge; it was good to know that he caught on quickly, that he would recall such a thing even now.

"Wolves," he supplied with slower enunciation, lips turning upward into a thin smile. "But yes, for predators and of those that are not our own." He wanted to mention that sometimes it was also for finding those that were not their own, but it seemed a bit much to try to explain now. While his world felt deceptively small in the present, theirs was even smaller. But not for much longer, he would wager—Hydra would soon bring introducing them formally to the table, and he would agree.