Pup under paw

She wound about her mother’s paws, and Felicity noticed a miss in her mother’s stride, as the pup got in the way. She glanced up at her mother’s face, wondering if there would be annoyance in her expression, but of course there was only love and a smile. Fel grinned back at her mother, and leaned against the inner side of her forepaw, head brushing against her mothers chest. She breathed in the scent that was more familiar to her then anything else in the world. The smell that had filled her life from the moment she knew what life was.

Right now her mother was bigger and stronger, and knew more about anything then Felicity, but the pup even then, knew that she would take on any demon in the world to keep her mother safe. That was the Abraxa’s way, to never back down, to fight for her family. It was still only an idea to Fel, and well she agreed with it she didn’t yet fully understand it.

“Yes, Mumma!” Felicity agreed, grateful to be given a job, to prove she was an adult and could handle responsibility. Her mother had to step around her very in-the-way form, making her way to the garden, and after a moment Fel jumped back to her feet and followed, shaking the licked feeling free of her coat.

“Mumma, what’s a Ca-stle?” she wanted to know. Home was going to be a castle, and that sounded very different from the grapevine she knew. “Can you show me where in the Ca-stle you first met? Why did you meet there and not here?”

“Yes Mumma” she agreed, watching first as her mum dug around a plant that smelled like the scents in the den, like the herbs her mother always smelled of. She wrinkled her nose in thought as she watched her mother work. That weed was a monster? A (to Fel) ferocious growl started in her belly, making its way up her throat and out her maw. She pounced on the next weed, the growing growl still vibrating in her chest. “Rrrrrr-gr-rrr!” she tore the weed to pieces, far different to the delicate and precise way her mother had tackled the garden. As she fell upon her victim with relish, she realized that the herb she was suppose to be protecting had gotten all tangled up in her claws too, and had perished. She stopped abruptly, jumping away from the plant. “Mumma, mumma, I broke it!” her ears were against her skull, her tail tucked against her legs, as she looked at her mother in surprise. The little herb had been so delicate, she hadn’t even noticed when her claws had gone through its stem as well as the stronger, thicker vines of the weed.

"Speech"