Swiftcurrent Creek Seyda Neen

Talos lay on her side, her belly protruding up balloon-like from the ground, perfectly black and round and warm and contentedly full, for once. She burped. The noise was surprisingly loud for such a small figure, as was the happy smacking of lips that followed just before she loosed a happy sigh and started to drift back off to sleep. She was starting to grow fond of this large strange new world after all.

The blissful peace didn't last long, however. Of course. It never did. She remained blissfully ignorant of the scuffling scrape of one particular brother's belly making its way across the den floor; blissfully ignorant of the unkind thoughts that were chugging along in his little head like a runaway freight train carrying a full load of pure vengeance. But her bubble of blissful ignorance was shattered when her brother's mouth found the innocent little black earflap it sought, eliciting a shocked flailing squall from Talos that outechoed her baby burp several times over.

She didn't have the coordination to rake her stubby claws of midnight across her littler brother's face as she shook him angrily off, but she tried. You had to give her that, she tried. And then she loosed her war cry, as loud and terrifying as she could make it (so...roughly about the volume, and shock and awe, of a particularly buff hairless baby rat) just before she curled around and latched with all her might on to the first stub her nose contacted. It was a foot— or a tail— well, it was something that wasn't her, and her small mouth bore down as hard upon it as it could. This was rather thwarted by her current continuing lack of teeth, however. Fear the gums of doom and justice!