Stone Circle Dearly

@Katla

“Feel that, Firefly?”

They were stamping their matching brown paws through the meadow, flowerless and green in this cold autumn. The air holds their breaths out in front of them in visible puffs. The sky is granite and cold, and from it soft taps that seep into dirt, ricochet off single grass blades, and tickle the dark ears of mother and daughter.

A muzzle raises and for a moment in this silence her eyes shut, “rain.”

Katla bristled up her short puppy fur against the chill of the day. Part of her missed the embrace of the summer sun that warmed her earliest memories. But part of her also liked the biting cold of the crisp autumn air on her nose. It was refreshing. And every time she felt it she was surprised to find herself ultimately as comfortable in this scenario as she had been in the summer. Colder weather, without a doubt, but her growing fur was thickening just in time to meet it. 

She suddenly felt a sharp sting on her nose, causing her to gasp in alarm, looking around for the culprit. And then there was another sting on her cheek, and another on her ear. 'Feel that, Firefly?' Her darting brown eyes finally turned up to her mother. Tauris had her eyes closed, her muzzle tipped up to meet the barrage. As mother held daughter's attention, Katla noticed the soft pattering of rain adding to the ambience of the meadow day. 'Rain.' Oh right… rain. Katla knew rain. When the river's spit fell from the sky.

Katla looked up, relaxing against the sensation of the raindrops, trying to take in the moment like her mother was. After a moment though, curious brown eyes slid aside to look back at Tauris. "Could a rain ever come like a waterfall?" She had been taught to be wary of rivers and waterfalls as they could sweep even an adult wolf right away. Rain falling that way sounded like a real problem… at least a river could be seen, rain was everywhere!

Down by her feet, her daughter tussles with a droplet. She cracks an eye open to watch in amusement, in awe of an imagination that turns rain into waterfalls; calm into adventure. Suddenly this quiet, festooned meadow is poorly suited to a Redhawk girl. She needs piney trees and steep ravines, hard shale underfoot and rain that surges like waterfalls.

“Yes,” Tauris warns with a shake of her ashen face, “enough rain will flood all the valley and little pups will be swept away!” She leaps through the meadow, opening up a grassy passageway behind her.

“Come, Katty! We must find high ground!”

Shock fills Katla's face as her mother answers with a foreboding warning, jaws parting in a horrified gasp. She looks wildly up around the heaping gray clouds, watching the streaks of rain as though to witness the moment this serene drizzle turns into a waterfall as long and as wide as the meadow itself. How will anything survive? 

By the time she looked back at her mother, Tauris was already bounding away. "WAIT!" she wailed, racing headlong after her mother. "Wait for me!!" Clumsy puppy paws and slippery grass made it hard for the little she-wolf to keep her footing, but adrenaline guided her movements and even moments of skidding and sprawling were recovered from so quickly that her progress was barely hindered. 

Was the rain getting louder, or was it the sounds of their drumming pawsteps? Was it getting harder, or was it just arching blades of the grasses snatching at her fur as she bundled past. She didn't need much to be convinced that the former was occuring. "Mama it's getting worse!!"

The world of rain and wind filters away to the pierce of that hollow voice, a cry only attuned to the ears of a mother. She closes the steps between them, whisking the cub to her belly with insistent arms and a sawing guilt.

“Oh Katla!” the murmurs attempt now to soothe, backtracking, “the rain cannot hurt you, see?” She holds out a paw beneath the harmless trickling but the waver of regret rattles her limbs.

What kind of mother was she, to scare her daughter? Was she so desperate for play or some semblance of normalcy that she’d forgotten the scale of Katla’s world in these early weeks?

“I’m so sorry to have scared you,” and the caressing snout to that small round cheek sought to wreathe her in protection against her fears.

Katla’s cries had barely risen over the sound of the rain before she was buffeted with something much less cold and wet, it was the warm fur of her mother. She tumbled into it as though it were a cloud of her dreams, getting lost in the thick plume of it. 

She shoved her two forepaws into her mother’s belly to right herself, propping herself up so as to look square up at Tauris’ face, taking in every word. Oh… so it isn’t dangerous…?

The silver she-wolf held out a paw, the rain pattering gently against it. Katla furrowed her brow, holding her own dark paw out to observe. Tauris’ snout caressed her cheek, but Katla’s mind was too lost in thought to register the gesture. “...why not, then?” She looked back at Tauris, unaware of her mother’s mountain guilt, but determined now to get to the bottom of this whole thing. “Why doesn’t rain ever fall like a waterfall?”

Katla offers up a little brown paw to the patter of rainfall and the nornir hugs her closer, pressing a kiss to the rounded space between the tips of her ears. Her daughter's hand against her’s is so small.

“It falls only like tears,” she whispers, “sometimes the sky has to cry, too.” Tauris lifts her muzzle into the wind, eyes closing a moment.

“I like the rain.”