Lost Creek Hollow i am pulsing the blood in your veins.

I CAN'T HELP MYSELF this takes place tomorrow morning :D  @Mordecai @Silas @Pippin @Larkspur 

Her sides heaved and her body shook.  It had been hours since she'd driven Mordecai from the den out into the night when she'd first realized her time had come.  Her contractions were persistent, but she knew instinctively her pups were not yet ready to greet the world.  This was simply stage one, and it was uncomfortable and seemingly never-ending.  She paced, she shivered, she panted and whined.  She threw up at one point, but otherwise busied herself pushing bedding around incessantly before pacing again and whining softly.

Harlyn had thought that this would have been as awful as it got.  Nature proved her wrong, and she thought briefly that she had been foolish to believe the pain could not grow worse than it already was.  But then she had become distracted as the felt the little ones in her belly shift and she knew that now was their time.  She strained and whined until she thought her entire body was going to tear in half.  But finally, she had one little bundle - a dark ball of sleek, wet fur and squirming limbs.  She cleaned him and coddled him as much as she could before the pain began to climax again and she prepared to welcome puppy number two.

This one seemed much like the first, though perhaps a bit lighter in color.  Again, Harlyn's instincts told her what to do and soon she was placed neatly beside the other bleating ball and her body seized again.  The last little wolf took longer than the others.  Much longer.  Where the first two had been ten, maybe fifteen minutes apart, her last pup seemed determined to remain firmly rooted in her womb.  The soft whines she'd emitted throughout her entire labor became louder as the minute dragged on.  She cried out in pain and frustration finally, and that seemed to be the call he'd been waiting for as the littlest of her babes finally came mewling into the world.

When all was said and done, dawn had crept out over the Hollow to find Harlyn lying with three tiny Ostregas suckling greedily at her belly.  Her sides still heaved and her body still shook, but there was overwhelming joy upon her face as she gazed at them.  Thinking back, the only problem she had with how long it had taken her to give birth to them was that she had missed out on that many hours of having them in her arms.  They were perfect.

!!!!

Without any better capacity to express himself, the dark pup's first breaths were accompanied with the biggest complaints he could muster. The events of this night had turned his tiny world upside-down and he was upset. As the first of their cozy little lot to be welcomed to the cold, dark world, it was natural to be disgruntled.

Such upheaval spurred his instincts into a vague panic -- not that he understood this. The relaxing rhythm of his mother's heartbeat had never been so far away. Being so exposed to the cold didn't help -- where was everyone! Every stimulus registering on his dulled senses simply read as really not alright with me. 

But warmth came back. It was different in this manifestation, as for his first time, he began to feel dry. A new sort of embrace soon followed and in these very first seconds, all he'd ever known before now already began to fade away. His caterwauling soon slowed down to confused little grunts. After, he muffled his voice on a teat, and felt far better with a full belly and a comfortable spot tucked against his mom's soft furs. This was suddenly not so bad..

Morale swiftly improved for the little Ostrega, so in his tiny scheme of things, that seemed to matter the most. He proceeded to snooze peacefully, worn out and unaware of the struggles his mother and siblings endured just next to him.

Despite the traumatic events that unrolled before the new babe, he would remember none of them. What was once a warm, cozy world turned cold as he was evicted -- the den air stinging him in the rapid decrease in temperature. His voice announced his upset -- the tiniest of squeaks and grunts, but soon the loving touch of his mother would sweep in to comfort him.
 
Her tongue was soothing -- his tiny body cleaned, and he was pushed toward the warmth of her belly where he nestled against the warm bodies of his siblings. Quieting instantly -- Pippin had not yet learned entitlement or anger. His only focus was that his little mouth could wrap upon a teat, and the warm milk he was supplied with was all he required.
 
Tiny front paws kneaded at her belly like a cat - and when he tired (within minutes), the smallest boy pushed his face as far as possible in to the warmth of his mother's fur, and found himself asleep once more.

Larkspur was the last to tumble out, of course. She came out angry and confused, not at all happy with the idea of being rejected from her place of comfort. The cold air felt especially insulting, and a bubbly sort of growl seemed to form in her throat but got lost in all the other weird sounds that filled the den's air. 

She squirmed haphazardly, indignant and trying her damnest to get back inside. She pawed through the liquids and was rewarded with a warm and wet tongue. Her pug-faced expressions gave the tiniest of grimaces as she let the tongue bathe her, not exactly by her choice though. She lifted her paw stiffly in protest, not exactly enjoying all the new sensations. 

She had an opinion, and while she didn't exactly know what it was, and how to express it, she definitely had it.

*smushes all the babies together long distance!?*

hello this is awkward as hell but i don't care because puppies excitement yay

When Harlyn had forced him out of the den, he had protests. But they had quieted quickly, as he was not willing to provoke her ire either. The first of those complaints had been for being woken and groggily pushed out into the cold; the last of those complaints had delved long into concern for the noises he heard. He kept his distance from the den — one she had complained about one day and loved the next (maybe only to hate it five seconds later) — initially, left off-guard in a way that left him to consider if the emotion would be permanent.

The carrying on she made pained him at times, but for every time he drew near she had sent him away again. Noisily, more than once, he had protested the exclusion before ultimately settling elsewhere. And somewhere around that time he was met with the sounds of faint mewling, a distinction that told him he was not the only one with complaints that reached far and wide. It was when most of those sounds had come to rest that he dared to creep closer, crawling low on his belly where the incline met the den mouth.

And there he waited silently for perhaps no more than a few seconds, before joining via whine.

  I was going to close this up, but I can't help myself.  Babies feel free to pop in again before we finish, but no obligation :D

Harlyn was exhausted, but her joy at simply getting to gaze upon their little faces caused her to fight the desire to sleep.  They were so precious, so small... Maybe not as cute as she had thought they'd be, but cuteness would come later when they more resembled puppies rather than small, lumpy sacks of meat.  The resemblance made her grin inwardly and she leaned forward to worry their little faces with her tongue to clean away her milk as they dropped off one by one.

The sound of a disturbance at the mouth of the den caused her fiery gaze to sharpen and snap over to peer at her mate's face.  The sight of it had always warmed her heart and soul, but instinct forced her ears forward and a low, warning growl to rumble from her chest.  She knew he would not harm them.  At least, some part of her knew this.  But they were so small and so fragile.  She could trust no one near them yet, not even Mordecai.  Her growl deepened, warning him away.

may as well drive it to ten posts! :P

His presence at the mouth of the den only lasted a brief moment. Though he could not see down to where Harlyn had tucked herself away, he could sense the change that had come to his world by the myriad of scents that arose. Of course, the most telling sign of that was the quieting sounds of that den, and that only lasted until he heard the deep warning that arose from none other than his mate.

He backed off immediately, rising and turning in such a fluid motion that it was enough to disorient him. But he adapted in time to save himself from teetering back towards the ground, and cleared the area around the den's mouth. This did not come without complaint from him either, but his grumbling was quieted as he opted to settle down in the timberline beyond it. At least from there, he could keep watch.

And maybe Harlyn would come around and call him back.

Too much Star Wars, I have watched.

If there was a disturbance in the force, Larkspur hadn't dug deep enough into her feelings to notice it. She alternated nursing and whining, her little mouth working hard at her mother's teat. Eyes still closed, ears folded up, her head bobbed in an internalized rhythm of feasting, and she continued until her stomach was softly plumped up with the milk.

Her tongue pushed off against the nipple, and she was free from the tantalizing spell of food. She struggled her paws against the warm, fleshy tummy of her mom trying desperately to find a cozy spot in all of this newness. In her desperation came exhaustion though, and comfortable or not, Larkspur's motions stilled to signify her entrance into sleep.

Once everything in his tiny world had realigned and he had his siblings at his side again, he was quick to settle into what would be the foundations of his new routine. Suckle, sleep, wiggle just a bit, suckle.. repeat as needed. There was not much to it, but that was fine, because there was not much to him yet either. This was the extent of all that he could do, after all. He might have made it here safely, but he still had much to gain in this life that spanned ahead of him, with his possibilities practically endless. 

For now, all he cared about was staying warm, fed, and relatively undisturbed. So that was exactly what he did.