Redhawk Caldera invisible bus stop

No more than two others, plz! Puppies would be awesome. ;)

Fox had been a dutiful mother, though she couldn't say that she had been a particularly personal one. She felt more connected to the second litter at this age than she had the last, and yet it still didn't seem like she spent enough time with them. Then again, perhaps that was for the best. With her first litter, they had become her entire world. With this litter, Fox was careful not to let them overwhelm her, and she took time for herself every few days.

Today was not one of those days. The sun was shining, the birds chirping, and the afternoon was more than pleasant. The four boys played amongst themselves just outside the den, their mother an observant statue as she sat with one eye open for any predators who might try and take her precious four babes.

Ferret tired of romping with his brothers rather quick. There was too much to the world past the 'front lawn' for the little bandit to ignore, and he was developing a strong, unconquerable thirst for the hunt. Such that, all it took was for a squirrel to descend down the trunk of a nearby tree, its sharp nails making an audible scratching nose, for the boy to become distracted. His ears flicked toward the noise first, then his eyes, and then his body was in clumsy-rocket mode as he tore after the creature barking up a storm.

But squirrels were not stupid, and he had not learned to plan his attack or to use any kind of technique at all in his pursuit of prey (read: anything that moved). For now, he thought that with enough bullheaded effort and speed, he would be successful. This was not the case. The squirrel retreated up into the tree, and he was left foolishly dancing and hopping on his hind legs as he tried repeatedly to scale the tree himself, or to reach the now-chattering rodent by jumping ungracefully into the air.

Sometimes it was easy to forget how delightfully stupid puppies were. Maybe "inexperienced" was a better word, but Fox found it more amusing to call them stupid. Ferret had broken away from his brothers and attempted to catch a squirrel (which quickly ran up a tree and escaped him with ease). Fox chuckled to herself, and she wondered if she should attempt to give him advice.

"Nah," she thought, "way more amusing to poke fun at him." Rising from her perch, Fox kept her ears swept back toward the other three in case one of them attempted to get into trouble. Her focus was on Ferret for the time being, though. "You're not going to catch it that way," she explained, "unless, I suppose, you gain the agility and claws of a mountain lion."

Oh, if only he could. Fortunately, troublepaws could not fully grasp what his mother was saying or he may have gotten the idea that such a thing was possible, and would then set out on an epic quest to achieve it. Or not. He probably would have gotten bored and gave up partway through. In the meantime, after a quick glance to his mother while she spoke, his attention was claimed by the squirrel. He gave up dancing, hopping and prancing, and sat on his rump.

This was not the first time he had squared off with a squirrel in a tree, and it wouldn't be the last. But this time, as he started barking back for every swear it made at him (because we all know squirrels have filthy filthy mouths) his bark started to morph. His jaw quivered as the solid barks became clacking chatters of their own, interspersed with sharp squeaks. The inflection was remarkably similar to the squirrel's own, enough so that rodent himself stopped to peer down at this... imposter.

Unlike some parents, Fox never spoke to her children as, well, children. She simply couldn't bring herself to say "goo-goo, gah-gah," or any of that nonsense. Instead, she just assumed that if they couldn't understand her, that was their problem, not her own. She observed as Ferret looked at her (clearly able to hear what she was saying), though the glazed expression on his face was enough to let her know he hadn't a clue what she had said.

Instead of giving up on the squirrel, which was what Fox had suspected, Ferret began to chirp right back at it. "Fuck," she said with a grin, "we named you wrong. Obviously, you should've been named Squirrel." She was gonna have to tell Peregrine about their grievous misstep in naming their masked boy.

Perhaps it was weirded out, or Perhaps Ferret had spoke such fluent squirrel, he managed to tell the little beast to go climb another tree, because that is precisely what the now-silent rodent did. It shimmed across a branch and then leaped to the next tree over, disappearing amid the branches until the boy lost sight of it all together and thus also lost interest.

He turned to his mother then, uttering a noise akin to skrrrr. Not quite the beginning of a word, and not quite not the beginning of a word, it was some sort of thing in between. But while he could convincingly mimic squirrels, mimicking his mother's spoken language would have to wait.

Ferret glanced around for his next distraction, and settled on a stick which he latched on to with a small growl and proceeded to drag toward his mother.

"You're a weird little shit," Fox commented with a toothy grin. Ferret wasn't the only weird one, but he was definitely a weird one. Moments later (such was the attention span of children), Ferret was scampering off to bring her a stick.

"Oh my gosh, is this for me?!" she exclaimed, feigning surprise as any decent parent would. She reached out, lightly grabbed the stick with her teeth, and tugged on it. Tug o' war was a game as old as time.

For a moment, let's pretend it was pure innocence that bade the pup to pick up the stick and bring it to his mother. You know, the cute childish whims that made pups want to show things to their parents and inclined them to share. And perhaps it was, but it was a fleeting innocence, for as soon as Fox's teeth clamped onto the stick, Ferret's eyes narrowed predatorily and his mouth curled up in a devilish grin. He held his position, long enough for his mother to maybe think it had been a trick all along, and then he let go of the stick and lurched forward, aiming a sharp bite to Fox's nose. His developing brain was becoming all the more capable of scheming, and he had saw a way to — maybe — claim the stick for himself if she dropped it.

Instead of doing what any normal child would have done, Ferret bit her fucking nose. "Fuck!" she yelped, dropping the stick and swatting at her masked son with a heavy paw. "You little shit, you can't do that!" Compared to her docile first litter—not to mention his brothers—Ferret was turning into a real asshole. Hopefully knocking him on his ass would take a little bit of that out of him... or it had the potential to make it worse.

It did kind of work. His mother dropped the stick to scream at him but she also swatted him which in turn caused him to drop his stick because he totally was not expecting that (but it was deserved, absolutely). But Ferret was nothing if not bullheaded, and as soon as he recovered from the momentary disorientation of being caught off guard, he lunged for the stick with a bark. He would try to snag it and run off.

I think you can archive here if you're cool with it!

He seemed—at least temporarily—unguarded, and Fox huffed approvingly. Not two seconds later, though, Ferret nabbed the stick and scampered off. "Good, you little shit," Fox said to herself with a smirk. If it meant he got the stick, she didn't care too much. Ferret seemed to have realized that his behavior, if not unacceptable, wouldn't be tolerated without backlash.