Redhawk Caldera Because I hate procedural cop shows!

Anyone's welcome, though I'd love a @Charlotte, @Aaron or @Sassafras in particular? :)

Towhee shivered. She wasn't tired and didn't want to sleep but she also didn't want to leave the warm pile of bodies. Feeling restless, she pressed closer to @Phox and entertained herself by looking up at the ceiling of the cave. It was sparkling, not that she knew that term or what it meant. She just knew that it drew her eye.

Some parts of the stone walls featured the same strangely alluring characteristic. Towhee peered around, transfixed by the peculiar glowing, unaware that these were the residual signs of the ice storm that had passed through the area the morning prior and left the wilderness a giant ice slick.

Eventually, the pup grew too antsy to sit still any longer. She reluctantly hopped to her feet, nudging her brother invitingly before walking in the general direction of the cave's mouth. @Finley was stationed there, keeping an eye on things. Towhee made to bound over to her godmother when she suddenly noticed a large, glistening protrusion dangling from the ceiling a few feet to the left of the Alpha's station, backlit by the wintry light outdoors.

It looked like one of the fangs she'd spotted in the adults' mouths. (The movement of said mouths endlessly fascinated Towhee, who couldn't hear their voices and did not yet understand that they were speaking at all.) The pup came to sit directly beneath it, peering upward and licking her lips. Her blue eyes tracked a droplet that slid down its side, reached its tip, then promptly fell and hit her square between the eyes.

Charlotte was healed, outwardly at least. With her wounds closed up and dry, she thought there would be no problem with her approaching the two youngins wandering through their cave. She'd been eyeballing the kids since coming into the Caldera, but today would be the first time she actually had a chance to speak to them. Hello there, she cooed in a maternal sort of awe. She'd never had any children of her own, nor did she necessarily want to anytime soon (kids were great when you could give them back), but she still felt a peculiar attraction to them. And what are your names?

Somewhere sprawled against a stone wall, Sassafras was dozing and whimpering softly in her sleep to the occasional twitch of her paws.

She’d quickly become fond of the communal aspect of sharing the cave with the rest of the Redhawks and found she wasn’t nearly as nervous to be near the puppies as when they’d all initially made the move. Their antics, including their sometimes startling wake-up calls and jabs to the face or ribs, had even grown on her. So while she admittedly (but only to you, dearest of readers) harboured a secret fear that she might accidentally squish one of them in her sleep, it was plain for everyone to see that she enjoyed staying close whenever she wasn’t out to hunt or conduct a border patrol.

With a hefty sigh, she expelled a great puff of air from her cheeks and finally settled the restlessness of her extremities in a display of catching better Zs than she had in quite some time.

We can skip Charlotte, since she's dead now. :P

She blinked hard, her tongue darting out to catch the cold water that slid down the side of her little black muzzle. Above her head, another droplet slithered down the icicle, then plopped right between her ears. Towhee froze, then slunk rather catlike toward Finley, hoping her godmother could protect her from these strangely icy beads of moisture. En route, she crossed paths with Charlotte and blinked up at the cream she-wolf. Her blue eyes squinted as her lips moved soundlessly.

Towhee made no response, of course. More than likely, Finley answered for her as the puppy abruptly turned away and bumbled deeper into the cave again, skirting around the frigid puddle now forming directly beneath the icicle. She cast her eyes around the shadowy crypt, searching for her litter mates, particularly Phox. She wasn't looking where she was going when she stumbled directly into Sassafras's soft, shadowy shape curled up against the wall.

rip

The position of her sleep cycle was the only reason she stirred when she was bumped by a plush little body in the relative darkness. She began to curl one formerly stretched foreleg closer to herself at the disruption, but stopped once a few centimetres of weighted resistance let her know that she was in the midst of dragging a puppy closer, too. Her dark eyelids fluttered open as she sleepily half sat up on one shoulder, craned her neck, and searched for the downy fur of a Firebird with her cold, wet nose. It would be a few seconds before her eyes could properly adjust to the low light of the cave, but her nose quickly found fur and blew a warm puff of air through it. Towhee smelled a bit like a hamster.

Before Towhee could figure out exactly what had happened, a leg hooked around her and began to tug, only to stop as quickly as it had started. The child blinked when Sassafras sat up partially, mahogany eyes glowing in the low light. She wasn't the most smiley child (except where her siblings were involved), though she stared raptly in the general direction of the adult's chin, slightly tensed as if waiting to see what might happen next.

With a mirthful quiver of her tall ears as she watched the observing cub, her tail began a gentle and expressive thwap against the cold stone. This continued even as she suddenly made a rumbly groaning sound and playfully tossed her weight back down, gazed sideways at the dark little puppy, tucked her chin, and firmly planted her cheek on the floor. She hadn’t interpreted the bump she received as a beckon to play, but her bright eyes and demeanor invited the kid to get her while she was down regardless of intent or accident.

Everything about the Eta's body language said play. It was the only language Towhee knew and she was already getting quite fluent in it, an aptitude that would prove crucial for her as she continued to develop one sense short. Her eyes tracked Sassafras's expression as her head lowered, then fell flush with the floor. It was, without a doubt, an open invitation.

Forgetting the icicle, her godmother and even her quest to find Phox, Towhee took the bait. With a squeaky little growl, she pounced the adult's closer foreleg, wrapping her stubby forelimbs around it and opening her mouth in a playful bite.

Consumed with holding the little Firebird’s attention before she inevitably found something else to hook her young senses, Sassafras let her jaws fall agape in a playful goad as she commenced wiggling her limb in imitation of prey that fallen into the clutches of the predator. She couldn’t wait to teach them how to survive in the Wilds and provide for their pack, but until they grew larger and adept with their paws the tiny puppies would receive tiny teachings.
 
“Awwwrowr,” she grumbled cheerily as she feigned an attempt to dislodge the inconsequential grip of the tri-coloured child’s needle-like baby teeth and short forelegs.

Her little teeth dug into Sassafras's leg, with nearly enough pressure to break the skin. Before that could happen, however, Towhee felt a vibration and froze. She deliberated for a moment, then let go of her hold to peer up at the adult's face. At only three weeks old, the pup had already begun making the connection between these vibrations and mouths moving. These things meant something, though she was still too young to comprehend much further than that yet.

Sassafras's mouth wasn't actually moving right now, which perplexed the youngster. But she shrugged it off, to so speak, and pounced the she-wolf's leg again, clamping on even tighter than before. She couldn't know it but the fierce urge coursing through her was a tiny taste of the bloodlust that would one day evolve her into a formidable predator.

She winced for just a second, but Towhee’s teeth were hardly worse than a kneading kitten’s claws. Sassafras assumed that it was her lively growl that caused the puppy to let go and gaze up at her, so she thought little to nothing of it. It took time for puppies to learn which sounds were meant to encourage and which were meant to warn, and it was largely tied to reading the tone of body language involved. Due to their proximity, Sassafras didn’t pick up on the fact that Towhee was only sensing sound based on vibration. She had no idea the child’s education was bound to be a little unconventional.

When the cub went back to grappling with the foreleg she’d offered up as a plaything, Sassafras leaned forward and blew another burst of warm air through downy puppy fur. Her eyes were wide and bright as she leaned back again and her tail thumped a little harder behind her, extending her other paw to Towhee to see if her attention would be divided or diverted to focus on the new over the old.

If you mind the PP, let me know and I'll edit! :)

This time, Towhee ignored the vibrations that she could feel in her jawbone. She pressed her sharp little teeth into the fur and flesh, feeling a jolt of delight when the tips of her teeth punctured the skin. The sensation prompted a savage little growl of delight to flow up her throat, the noise of it muffled against Sassafras's leg. Simultaneously, she felt a warm gust of air that surprised her so much that she relaxed her jaw and stepped back again, blinking and curious.

She saw a blur of movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head toward it, narrowing her baby blues at the culprit. She was just about to spring toward Sassafras's windmill of a tail when another paw was presented to her. Towhee paused for a split second, then began glancing between the two paws and the tail. Which one made the most delightful prey? The pup ultimately bounced toward the Epsilon's thumping tail after all, simply because it was moving.

I'd never!

Sassafras had only been about a second away from nudging Towhee away from her in order to curb her insistence towards cannibalism when the little ball of pudge and fluff relented all on her own and stepped away. The dark adult tilted her head slightly with a twitch of her tall ears and beat her tail against the stone that much harder, following the tiny Firebird’s focused line of sight. She suddenly winced again, but it had nothing to do with pain this time.
 
Instead of simply allowing Towhee to sink her paws, claws, and needle-sharp teeth into the feathery fur of her practically billowing tail, Sassafras leaned and dragged herself about her hindquarters with her forelegs. She stuck out a single paw to bat at the puppy very gently, aiming to distract her yet again, but she couldn’t find it in herself (yet) to stop thwacking her tail around. Sassafras was happy, after all. It hardly mattered that she stood to be chewed on.

The frisky bat immediately arrested the pup's movement. Forgetting about the swaying tail, she spun on her heel (a little drunkenly) and swiped out her own foreleg in response. A little growl throbbed in her chest before racing up her throat and bursting noisily from her snout. Her lips wrinkled back to expose healthy pink gums and little baby fangs, even as her tail gave a few playfully predatory lashes.

But before she could think of pouncing Sassafras yet again, something—or, rather, someone—rushed up beside her. There was a blur of movement, then a none-too-gentle bump as one of her fellow pups body-checked her. Towhee turned with a little bit of an indignant noise, only to discover it was Phox. Her expression quickly shifted from aggressive to jolly, tail hoisting into a wag and useless ears perking atop her head.

Forgetting about her larger playmate, Towhee spun on her heel again (slightly less drunkenly now), this time bouncing upward to wrap her forelegs around her favorite brother's shoulders and lick enthusiastically from his neck up to his cheek. She smothered him like this for a few seconds, then dropped back to all fours, crouched and sprang further back into the cave with an automatic and inviting bark—essentially leaving Sassafras in the dust.

I'd love to have another soon! :D