Dragoncrest Cliffs Light of the moon moves west

Warm sunlight beat down on the den. The exterior was cooled by a pleasant breeze off the sea, but the interior was positively stifling. Sobo awoke from his nap in a grouchy torpor and struggled to pull himself upright at first, torn between slipping back into groggy half-consciousness and vacating the suffocating heat. He chose the latter, gaining his feet and bumbling his way to the outdoors.

There he found a place shaded by sea grass and ferns and flopped down on his rear, panting and squinting his eyes gratefully when the wind rose and blew across his dark features. With it came the cries of gulls and the crash of waves; the boy tilted his ears forward to listen to the song of the sea, thumping his tail appreciatively against the warm dirt.

@Mireille crossed his mind then, so he rose, sniffing the air exaggeratedly in an effort to locate her.

her world had expanded outward.
since the trip to the shoreline, mireille had become quite aware that there were many more things beyond her sense of self. and while she could not yet comprehend the true enormity of it, her nascent sense of spirituality sharpened.
her round ears heard sobo, and she turned, panting, from where she had been about to roll through a cooler patch of tall grass. a burble of their mixed languages; she gestured to the sky suddenly, where gulls began to fly lower as they descended toward the water.

There she was! Sobo's gait transformed from searching to buoyant and jubilant when he found his sister, tongue lolling against grinning jowls. He tripped and nearly lost his footing on his approach and only managed to stay standing by bumping into her. Sobo didn't know how to feel apologetic or sheepish about it, so he acknowledged his blunder by serving her a face full of slobbery kisses.

Then he let his gaze be pulled to the sky and the shapes winging away overhead. Oooooooooo, he breathed in his sister's ear. She was so smart! Sobo was so absorbed with his immediate surroundings that he probably wouldn't have noticed those without Mireille's gesture. With a nudge, he peeled away from his sister and began to follow after the birds with rapid and stumbling movements, neck craned upward so that he didn't realize he was heading straight for a brand spankin' new splat of gull droppings.

sobo turned and trundled off, following the shadows that the birds cast upon the ground. mireille followed, craning her neck and staring up at them as well.
however, mireille eventually looked back down to see where she was going, squealing the long note of "so—!" a milisecond too late to save her brother from his fragrant fate.
it certainly disgusted her, the look of it. mireille looked sadly at sobo, tail waving with sympathy, but she was not about to come closer and dirty her own paws.

It was just like a scene out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Sobo's paw pad met the gull droppings. He had less than half a second to register that something gross was squishing up between his toes before his paw skidded forward. Even the dirt-and-sand mixture underfoot did little to stop his momentum. He splayed his legs awkwardly as he went down, landing chest-first in the smeared mess and yelping at the way his shoulder cranked painfully in its socket.

Only a twinge of the arm that would bruise later, but it was more pain than Sobo ever experienced before. Panic bled into the denim blue of his eyes as he cried out shrilly with a frantic look at his sibling for whatever assistance she could provide. The pain was already fading, but Sobo could only focus on the momentary flare of it right now, and not the impermanence.

something was not right.
mireille's small tail stopped and pointed straight behind her, hackles fluffing with alarm. whatever sparkled visage she was developing suddenly paled beneath her instinctual call to aid her sibling.
she dashed to sobo, whining as she tucked her muzzle beneath his a moment and began to sniff over him, keeping their small bodies pressed together. mireille was ready to call for their mothers and sisters, seconds from raising the anxious yelping of a pup in need of protection from their pack.

It was fear more than pain that kept him crying even after Mireille rushed over to investigate. Shrill cries issued from his lips. The pain itself was already nearly gone, but the mere phantom of it playing over and over in his mind made it seem present still.

It seemed their adventure would soon come to an end. Sobo was a delicate boy, for all his gargantuan bulk. He boasted little ability to soothe himself out of a fit like this. Mireille was okay for comfort — he snuggled into the side of her and let his cries taper off to whimpers — but it was his mamas he wanted now. He indicated as much by jostling back toward the den, limping in an exaggerated way, for the memory of pain remained with him.

There was no lasting injury, however. Just the hurt pride of a little boy who slipped in bird shit.

mireille followed, caught between wanting to worry for sobo, and wanting to tease him for his shambling gait and little birdish cries.
mireille opted for the former, and escorted him back, babbling at once to maman all the details that her brother perhaps did not want to be told.