Take me somewhere nice

Walk | Talk | Think

Despite the loss Mercianne continued to feel over Awaken's absence, the pups had given her little time to dwell upon the fact. They grew at an alarming rate, quickly beginning to fill the den that she had thought to be big enough to house all of them, herself, and her mate. They were rambunctious, energetic, curious to a fault. She had been having to keep an increasingly close eye upon the entrance to their den because of how much they wished to be given their freedom already, but feeling overly cautious, overly worried that they might somehow vanish just as their father had, she had been reluctant to allow that sort of unsupervised freedom.

So, because she was still asleep when it happened, she paid no attention to Clover as he crawled quietly out of the den and into the bright world of morning, just outside of their home and too dazzled to think of moving further. Emery was only slightly different. She felt the shift of pups as she rested close to them, nestling them within the circle of her legs, but the movement had been enough to rouse her faintly from slumber. At first she wrote off the shift as the group of six collectively resettling themselves into positions of comfort, ready to do the same herself, until she felt the absence of the pups from their proper places as only a mother could.

A tense moment of panic flashed her brown eyes open and they skimmed immediately over the four sleeping figures still snuggled among each other at her side as she lifted her head from the floor. Noting the absence of two, she quickly leaned her head back until it rested on its side against the den to peer outward into the bright morning beyond the small burrow, and sighed quietly when she saw the two figures of the missing Clover and Emery. Very gently her lips began to curl into a relaxed smile, grateful that they were at least still where she could see them even if they were not at her side where she could immediately protect them. But assuring herself that here within the protective network of dens and sleeping quarters of the Snow Rogues they would be more safe than anywhere else, she merely relaxed against the warm earth as she watched them, saying nothing to disrupt their fun and content for the moment to observe whether they knew or not.