Loki stirred in his sleep, paws twitching and face contorting in the grip of a nightmare. Only a faint whimper escaped his jaws; even in sleep he would not allow himself to wake his children from their slumber in the den beneath him. His breathing quickened as the nightmare morphed from incorporeal fear to something more painful... memory.
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"But dad I don't want to spar Hati,"
the green-eyed pup said desperately, his last resort as he had failed to get out of sparring at all. "He's too big and he's mean and it's not fair."
The last came out as a wail even as Hroovitnir spun to face him, fangs bared in fury.
"Shut your whining mouth before I take your tongue out of it, boy." Loki's jaw clicked shut; even at his age the clever pup knew it wasn't an idle threat. One of Hroovitnir's wives had no tongue as punishment for her backtalk and he'd seen her sometimes sobbing quietly when she thought no one was looking. He really, really wanted to try to reason his way out of this but Loki knew Hroovitnir was unreasonable in any mood, let alone this one. Heck, even Hati was more reasonable. Speaking of Hati...
His eyes slid to the burly golden-eyed pup standing sullenly at his side. They were the same height, but already Hati outweighed him by quite a lot. Spars between them never ended well. Hati hated him. Loki would much rather spar Thor. He was big and dumb and had a temper too, but at least he didn't try to actually hurt people really bad when he didn't have to.
But Hroovitnir's growl was beginning to increase in timbre and Loki knew he'd explode in about five seconds so, swallowing hard, he turned to Hati and braced himself, awkwardly taking up the defenses Hroovitnir had drilled into them every day in the six months since they were two months old and he'd decided they were ready for formal training. Yay, time to have fun, he thought bitterly.
OOC: Thor, Nott, and Eyfura are welcome to join in as dream-sequence babies. Thor/Loki/Hati litter is eight months old, Nott/Eyfura litter is two months old but not in training because they're just girls.
