And Another One

She shouldn't have been so far from the den by herself. She didn't even have her larger siblings with her let alone her mother, but she'd seen her father leave from the mouth of the den and once she'd managed to sneak out into the unfamiliar area outside the den she'd been determined to follow his scent, so determined that she didn't even stop to gaze about her with either awe or fear at her first real experience at the world. With her short puppy legs the going was slow but she was very stubborn. She didn't even stop when she'd passed the far point of what she might have judged to be allowable, just kept stalking forward with her nose pressed to the dirt until she'd gotten to the point that the scent was too cold for her inexperienced nose to distinguish from even older scents - which wasn't actually that far. Then, she sat down to wait.



In far less time than she'd been expecting - it had taken her longer than she'd thought escaping the den and then walking this far - her father's form came into view dragging something. Food? Her black-tipped tail gave a single wiggle. She was too young to eat meat for herself but she was able to eat the mushed up stuff her parents sometimes disgorged for her, and she'd nibbled at what Revenge and Mercy got though mostly she was still too small for it. Still it was exciting.



She moved forward to greet him when he stopped to drop the bundle, tail wagging politely. "H'lo fatha," she spoke in her tiny, piping voice. "Wat'oo brought?" She leaned forward to sniff the much-larger stripey thing curiously.