Hopes and Promises [Puppy Training]

With eight pups in the pack, it was time to hold a small puppy training session. While her own were half-grown and already into Promisehood in the pack, and Justice’s three were young, it would still be useful to have the mixture of ages and experience. Her pups knew plenty enough to guide their younger packmates and they’d be able to practice together.

Lee and Amorielle were down with a cold, but Aurielle would catch the two girls up on what they’d missed. With a hum of breath, she padded to a wide clearing, Ardyn ghosting her steps like a big, fiery black shadow. He’d been contrite since his brawls with the bears. She’d given the large boy a thorough dressing down for his recklessness. He possessed a streak of daring she wasn’t certain she’d had at his age.

On one paw, she was proud that he’d leapt to the defense of a fellow wolf. He’d brought the bear down, cut off a threat to Valhalla and local loners. On the other paw, her motherly instincts screeched and pulled at their manes, wailing that he could have been killed! He could have had his face swiped off with one swat of a bear-paw.

In the end, she could only give him the dressing down, and then a butchering lesson on bear anatomy. Again. She cast a glance over her shoulder at him, eyes touching over the fresh wounds over his shoulder, baring the dark skin under his black coat. His glowing blood was an enigma she’d never expected when she’d battled to bring him into the world. It was something she couldn’t explain, though she imagined religious fanatics might suggest he was a demigod or a god reborn.

He tripped over his own front paws, having been distracted by a dragonfly buzzing past his nose, and she hid a snort of amusement. God of sunlight, fire, and clumsiness. No. He was simply a wolf, a boy with a reckless streak of daredevil thrills. Like her, he was simply born differently, and he’d merely inherited her glowing and shimmering coat, though in different colors. His paws might have come from Red’s side, since Aoife had them too, and the canines were, of course both parents’ doing. The mane and tail hair were her mark, though.

Finally she settled in the clearing, haunches lowering as she lifted her muzzle and sang for the pups of Valhalla.

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Labhair an Sean-Teanga." ---- "Hear" ---- Think