Redhawk Caldera If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis

It was cool and overcast today, yet it made no difference to Wildfire. When Peregrine coaxed the pups out to the little clearing just beyond the den's mouth, she romped happily in his shadow, eager as ever to get outside. In her excitement, she lunged at Raven, nipping her sister's ear with perhaps too much force. It caused the other girl to squeal, so Wildfire leaped backward, ears flattening apologetically. She recovered within seconds, now directing her energy toward her brother as @Nightjar roamed within range.

"Ayaaa!" the dhole lookalike screamed as she launched herself at her older, larger sibling. Wildfire's little red forelegs draped about the boy's robust shoulders and her mouth opened wide as she attempted to gnaw on the side of his face. It was all in good fun, though, with no real intent to harm (not that that had stopped her from injuring him in the past!).

Turns out said friend is getting an x-ray done first... so I have a little time to post!

Upon being led out into the weak daylight, Nightjar did notice the cool breeze, but promptly forgot about it as soon as his sisters started romping nearby. He was the last one out of the den's shadow today, being still sluggish from a nap. Mid-yawn, the boy tweaked one ear (the left one) toward Raven when she squeaked, and then opened his eyes to see a small red blur coming toward him.

Even a whole week after his eyes had opened, Nightjar could only focus on things that were really close. His father and the retreating Raven were both black smudges in the approximate shapes of wolves, while Wildfire's face had come into brilliant clarity.

Wiggling his tail, the large pup squared up his shoulders to hold Wildfire's weight, and then turned his head to snap affectionately at her ear. "Yaaaah!" he squeaked out a battle cry and lifted a leg to try to jostle her to even the playing field, for you see, Wildfire already had the advantage.

She landed her bite to his cheek, yet he grasped onto her ear at the same time, earning a squeal from Wildfire. Shaking her head rapidly, she tore free and pushed off him with a loud but playful growl. On all fours again, she thrust her little face into his and barked loudly, spittle flying from her mouth and sprinkling Nightjar's nose.

But she was all bark, no bite. She suddenly turned and tried to make a run for it, though she hoped he would give chase, as was evidenced by her high-pitched giggle. It would not be unlike their very first game of tag, though now they had their sea legs, so the stakes were higher.

Wildfire managed to free herself from Nightjar's grip, but he was undeterred. She barked loudly and he rejoined with a warm growl, followed by a clumsy swatting of the ground with his forepaws. Before he could force her into a wrestling match, Wildfire turned and fled, far more quickly than she had on the last occasion. But Nightjar was able to run, too, and was quickly in pursuit.

He focused in on her jet black tail as it bobbed and weaved through the air with her movements. His instincts flared and suddenly, it was more than a game of tag; it was a high stakes hunt, and the tip of her tail was the target. This was a test of precision. Compared to normal wolves, the pups were slow and very clumsy, but Nightjar felt like a true professional as he chased Wildfire... even though he was nowhere near a pro.

He was also nowhere near her tail when he snapped at it, proving that he was very imprecise and causing him to not only miss, but to overcompensate for missing by backpedaling and falling right on his ass.

My niece is 18 months and she definitely babbles in some strange alien language, so I'm using her as inspiration! :D

Little Wildfire headed for their father, seeking refuge in the swarthy Alpha's shadow. She wound around his leg like a kitten, blinking her golden eyes as Nightjar went hurtling sideways and wound up plonking on his ass. She snorted, then laughed airily as she sprang from beside Peregrine's legs and rushed up to Nightjar's side again.

This time, she stopped just short of him and began to prance, the little twinkle toes. She attempted to swing a foreleg at him to invite him to play, yet she was just as uncoordinated as him and wound up losing her balance. Wildfire fell unceremoniously onto her hip, causing her to snort again. Feeling much more solid on her hindquarters, she plucked a paw off the earth and swatted at him as originally intended.

"Baba shmee!" she declared as she swiped her leg. "Baba shmee merda!"

He watched woefully as Wildfire escaped to the safety of Peregrine's shadow. She wasted no time in coming back out, however, and mocking him for his fall. The cubs were all good-natured, though, none of them particularly inclined toward bullying the others, so of course Nightjar only took this as another challenge. He liked challenges—he liked the straightforwardness of them, and the ability to understand with gestures what another wolf was feeling or thinking. It would become evident in his later days that this would be his primary form of communication, and that he would have trouble comprehending the more subtle nuances of spoken word.

Speaking of words, Wildfire had tumbled over, smacked him (pretty hard, actually), and was now crowing some form of declaration. "Bahabam pthhhbbt," Nightjar returned, unable to articulate around the tongue that now hung between his lips. He'd just blown his first raspberry, although there was no way he'd be able to replicate it.

Raising one of his own broadening paws, he swiped back, hopefully engaging Wildfire in the equivalent of a slapping fight.

Nightjar echoed her battle cry and the two youths engaged in what could only be called a slap fight, their forelimbs flailing at one another. Wildfire leaned her face away, instinctively trying to keep it out of reach of her brother's large, clumsy paws. All the while, she giggled and snorted. It was especially funny to her whenever the two of them managed to slap one another an incidental high five, their soft, leathery paw pads clapping together in perfect unison. Patty cake, patty cake...

The attention span of the young was limited, so eventually Wildfire grew weary of the game (right around the time her forelegs grew tired and heavy). "Baba pope!" she bleated, jumping suddenly and clumsily to her feet. She tipped forward, stumbling, her muzzle thrusting toward Nightjar's fuzzy little chest like a blunt sword. She face-planted against him, then pushed back and righted herself with a sharp little giggle.

The two were practically nose-to-nose now, so Wildfire seized the moment by lifting a paw and attempting to slap her brother right across the face. Since she was smaller, it would not be the most painful of strikes, yet the point blank range almost guaranteed a hit and she was much too young to exercise anything like restraint.

Their antics were surely endearing to any onlooker, but to Nightjar, this was the fight of his life. Wildfire was the opposing army and he the commander of a fleet, and this slap fight would determine the rulers of the world. He went at it with boyish competitiveness. Not realizing he was a little bit larger and a little bit stronger than his female sibling, he was inexplicably disappointed when Wifi ended the game, only to faceplant right into his chest with all her weight behind her.

He staggered on the spot a little, having been halfway to his own feet. Before he could truly recover, Wildfire's paw and forelimb slapped down on his face and brought tears to his eyes from the force of a blow to his sensitive muzzle. Blinking them back, the boy quickly got to his feet and roared out a battle cry, then thrust all his weight forward in an effort to tumble her over so he could pin her down.

It wasn't that it hurt, per se, but more that it caused a strange feeling in his sinuses. Pinning Wildfire would ensure it didn't happen again, and besides, it was the most natural form of play for a wolf pup. Naturally, though, things didn't always work as planned, and so before he could even get a hold on her (assuming he'd succeeded in knocking her over at all), his miniscule whiskers twitched and he sneezed loudly.

Her paw connected, sending a jolt up her forelimb. It hurt. Wildfire cried out in surprise and pain, then teetered in the opposite direction and fell back on her haunches... just in time for Nightjar to leap forward and shove her over completely. She fell flat on her back, belly up beneath her brother's weight. To add insult to injury, he sneezed directly into her face, which she jerked sideways, eyes squeezing shut instinctively. She was too late to avoid the brunt of the spray and soon his saliva and snot dripped from her brow- and cheekbones.

She wasn't that bothered by it, once she recovered from her impulsive grimace. Wildfire's tongue darted out to clean the parts of her face she could reach. She didn't bother worrying about the rest. Anyway, she was pretty well distracted by Nightjar's weight pressing down on her, particularly her lower abdomen. She squirmed, grunting under her breath as a cue for Nightjar to get off her. But he wasn't quick enough and she unintentionally returned his fluid bonding favor by losing control of her bladder. Warm urine spread over both of them.

Even though Nightjar's hold was ruined by the sneeze, Wildfire scarcely moved under him, and so he crowed a series of strange gurgling sounds as a proclamation of his triumph. He was victorious! He watched cheekily as she swept her tongue across his concoction of boogers and saliva, unable to stop his tail from wagging happily over his hindquarters. It wasn't really dominance he was trying to exert here—there was no doubt that if he was large enough to force it on both his sisters if he really wanted to, but the fact was that he didn't care to. This was play.

Or at least, it was play. Wildfire grunted and squirmed, which Nightjar took as a signal that she'd had enough of his big face and his fat body, but before he could escape, a stream of urine found his belly and soaked him all the way down to his thighs. By now, the pups were old enough to comprehend what was happening, and so he backpedaled as quickly as his amateur walking skill would allow, squealing a displeasured, "eeeeeee" the entire time.

Truth be told, Nightjar normally thought pee was a pretty cool thing. He liked to pee and he liked to smell other wolves' pee, but somehow, being peed on was totally uncool. The boy shook out one of his hind legs, growling and bristling like a tiny cat. He wasn't really upset at Wildfire, but at her urine, which he would've attacked if there was any way to do it.

Like her brother, Wildfire didn't much like the sensation of the warm pee soaking her underside. When he backed off her, she immediately flipped onto her belly, then began wriggling on the grass in an effort to wipe it off herself. When she stood, she was still damp. Thoughtlessly, she tried to insert her head between her legs to lick herself dry while still standing. She ended up falling over, though she never ceased her grooming. Wildfire simply thrust one leg in the air like a cat, resting her weight on her other hip as she swiped her tongue over the warm, wet patches of fur.

When she was satisfactorily clean, she looked up. Nightjar looked as if he'd stuck his paw in an electric socket (not that Wildfire could know of this simile); his fur was puffed up to make him look twice his size. "Oowa," the younger puppy said, golden eyes admiring her brother's new hairstyle. "Aya con yew," she babbled, likely giving him some sort of compliment in their youthful goggledygook language.

But his new look wasn't meant to last long. The overcast sky had grown darker above the puppies while they played. Now, it began to drip large, cold raindrops. The rain shower was off to a slow start, though it would pick up pace in a few moments, turning into a full-blown rainstorm. Sensing this, the adults appeared and began to usher them into the den. They were too distracted to notice Nightjar's new haircut, even when Wildfire excitedly tried to point it out to them.

You can fade this here if you want, though I'd be happy to continue it inside too. :)

Not yet in total control of his actions, the uncomfortable Nightjar was unable to smooth his pelt out. Every attempt to place his hair back down resulted in him puffing up again, clearly affronted by the urine soaking his underside. As he wasn't quite clever enough to follow Wildfire's example, he was left to stand there, soaked and miserable, until the sky started to fall.

The first plop of a raindrop on his backside sent a shocked shiver through Nightjar's body. The adults hardly had to usher him inside, for another drop on his head was enough to send him scampering into the den with his tail curled between his legs. Rain was natural, as he would soon learn, but his present condition coupled with the unknown water source scared him to death.

One of the two dutiful parents soon smelled the urine that was drying on his underside and swept him up to clean him, then deposited him next to his siblings. The fright from the rain was gone, but in its place, exhaustion crept in. Without even trying to engage Wildfire further in play, the boy curled up right where he was and fell fast asleep within seconds.