Dragoncrest Cliffs clip, pole, smoke, fade

chani babbled. she ate. she grew, blossoming, unfurled from moist infant into strengthening toddler.
today she made her way toward the starglow outside the den, babbling nonsense in french and creole as she reached a small chubby paw up toward the lights, crooning.

it never failed to amaze val how quickly life took hold of those unshapely little lumps. it was poetic, the way their eyes opened and new light filled them - the way they looked at the world in quiet gasps, alight in wonder.

some time between when he'd been that small and now, he'd lost that luster.

a noise from within pulled val from his thoughts. behind him chani babbled, her little form dappled in moonlight. he waited for chacal's croon to call her back; when none came, he turned upon the reaching babe and glanced at the stars which held her attention. does your maman know you've escaped?

one post cameo <3

Chacal slept lightly, with her two young toddlers at her side. She flinched and startled into wakefulness when they moved, or when she heard someone approach the den. Perhaps she feared another of her children might be snatched by a bird, and her protective instincts had been heightened.

Her daughter’s voice caused her to awaken. She watched with one eye open as Chani moved toward the den’s entrance, wondering if the girl was sleep-walking. Chacal watched her daughter pause at the den’s entrance, prepared to sweep forward and brush her back in should she move further- 

But the sound of Valravn’s voice steadied her. His voice was soft, but it warmed her heart like the glow of a candle. She settled her head back down, uttering little more than a quiet cough as both reassurance and permission.

her little tail swished. she knew this man, if by scent only.
her eyes took him in. her mother's sound encouraged her forward. "ze'wal," she mumbled in some garbled enunciation of what she wanted.
chani looked up, up, up, toward his face.

from within the den came a soft cough of permission from chacal. val rose quietly, his tail moving in gentle wags.

beneath him sapphique’s little sprite peered back. she was so impossibly small! once he had been that little, a life time ago.

he looked up, tracing the ribbon of stars which punctuated an otherwise stormy navy sky. you and me can’t catch those... but this.. he lowered to the ground, pulling a long stick from the grass adjacent to the den. want?

chani stared at the heavens a moment longer, and then refocused her baby's eyes on what the man brought from the earth. it hung stiffly from his jaws! her gaze widened and she began to trundle forward, answering the innate call of grab and chew.
she tripped on her way to him, landing with a light oof and a pause she took before she decided to wail or not.

oops. the stick from val’s jaws fell with a clatter as he repositioned himself alongside the collapsed puppy. he should have remembered they had all the tactile agility of sea cucumbers at this stage — much cuter, of course.

upon chani’s little face a stormcloud brewed; it suggested great affront was threatening to break over their quiet night. he glanced to the den, then back to his niece. who put that rock there that you tripped over? planting an affectionate lick atop her head, val settled with both paws around her. maybe we start with something that isn’t your size. a bug? hmmmm. if you weren’t supposed to be in bed, i’d show you where all the good bugs are had. he wasn’t sure how much of speech chani understood at this time, but he recognized babies often reacted positively to voices.

he talked a very lot! chani forgot that she had been about to shout. "bud. bug. bed." the last; she lifted a small round paw and flicked it toward the den, as if to inform him where she slept.
the majority of his words were not comprehended, but she did know that one.
her blue eyes searched behind her for the rock. she patted it and looked up at him again, wanting to hear the tone he had uttered before.

delight swarmed the yellow of his gaze. she understood him, in some measure!

val hunkered down so they were eye level, canting his head back to where bed was and then to chani. as she patted the rock val inched towards it, turning it over with a nudge of his nose.

what slithery, delightful things crawled to life by such an upending? that's right! bug! see how they crawl across the rock?

"oh! oh! bug! mama, BUG!" chani hollered back toward chacal, then returned to her explorations, tail swishing merrily. first a rolly poly, then a centipede. she squealed at the feel of a tiny, slimy slug, and pointed in fright at a scurrying black beetle which ran over one of her forepaws.
"rock! have bug?" had they come out of it? chani glanced up at val solemnly.

oops. val hoped chacal hadn't already drifted off to sleep, for chani's voice was sure to wake her. he hunkered down near the stone, turning it from one paw to the other as chani squealed and then pointed to an interloper who'd scurried across her paws.

val couldn't help but laugh. yes, some of them are even edible. his grin turned mischievous. but, you have to smell them first. some of them taste terrible.

"eatin'," the girl mumbled, then promptly grabbed up the rolly polly. "blech!" she shouted, spitting the poor arthropod very far away into the grass. the slug was next; chani munched on this with great relish and swallowed it.
"more?" she asked val, tilting her head to one side before she started to sniff at the ground once more for another rock.

val's reflexes as a general rule were terribly slow. and children, it turns out, keep one on their toes. constant vigilance was not in val's nature, and so whoops! there goes the rolly poly.

blech! val grinned as chani spat the offensive taste from her tongue. he remembered that lesson well. the slug fared no better; he watched as she gobbled its slimy pelt down. careful, you don't want a tummy ache. he wondered if slugs weren't like other wormy denizens of the dirt - russian nesting dolls of worm upon worm, nematode to filiform, each designed to parasitize upon the other. he was grateful to be born something as noble as a wolf!

as chani cast about for a rock, val listened to the breathing within the den. at some point he imagined he would overstay his welcome -- but for now he was content to revisit a younger side of himself, playing chaperone to chani as she overturned rocks as if some tiny godzilla among a city of rubble.

chani snuffled loudly and rooted, discovering the slumbering larvae of beetles which she tasted in delight.
but then chani unearthed a true horror, some eldritch monster the size of her paw, with trailing cthulian limbs and a naked exoskeleton.
by all accounts, a very sad cricket, but she had no name for it, only screaming as she flung it away from her and scrambled back toward val.

val had eaten enough in the world that bugs were not often on his menu. their meat was small, and scarcely worth the expenditure effort -- but for a puppy, it was a valuable learning tool.

he pretended to root alongside chani, flinching as she shrieked and flung something hard and leggy his way. at first val mistook it for some creature of the deep and recoiled -- but his gaze adjusted to the slender limbs and rounded carapace, and he laughed. those are ones that don't taste good. he warned chani with a flick of his paw towards the cricket, motioning to the defensive sack of fluid which it housed in its mouth. val had learned at her age such liquid was highly corrosive and unpleasant, especially when it landed upon your tongue.

chani was quite winded after such levels of excitement; she crept toward val, spitting, ears splayed, and sprawled with a yawn across his forelegs as she glared at the gross offensive thing.
"yucky," she mumbled, having learned a valuable lesson she would apply to other dirt vittles in the future.
another yawn, wider.

great ugly thing as it was, val felt relieved to see the cricket amble away. at his feet chani collapsed - val nibbled her forehead in an affectionate kiss.

her yawns came in little waves. val continued to preen her soft fur, feeling the tug of his own tiredness. a nap sounds good. he affirmed, yawning wide before he nudged chani towards the watchful embrace of her mother.

<3

chani would return on sleepy legs to chacal, and nestle into the warmth of her mother's body for her nap. but not before her babyish gaze beheld val a last time, reinforcing today as a formative moment for her in multiple ways. 
foremost among them was to be careful what you ate and that val was part of the the intimacies of the sapphique densite. against him and her brothers would the girl grow to measure all men, and for many reasons, her understanding of val as role model was a healthful one.