She'd escaped again.  What did "grounded" really mean,  anyway?  She was on the ground all the time! Asla had tried to be good,  honest. She had tossed and turned,  trying to sleep with the rest of her family.  It just didn't happen for her though.  Her young mind wouldn't stop racing. Maybe she'd just take a little walk. The tiny,  cream colored child cast a sidelong glance at the pile of bodies.  She'd be back before they even knew she was gone. Aslatiel was a sneaky little thing.  She pretended to climb upon the big body of her father in order to get comfortable.  She stayed still for a time just in case she woke him up and worked hard to still her breathing and feign sleep. After a few minutes,  she slid slowly off of him and landed gently on the ledge of the wall that held them prisoner. Again she stopped,  hunkering to the ground and feigning sleep, though one plum colored eye was open and was starting at the door to freedom. On little silent paws,  Asla crept across the den. Making herself as thin as possible to not allow light inside,  she slid through the doorway and out into the open.  The girl inhaled deeply,  enjoying her freedom before looking up to the night sky. "Hello, Stars!" She whispered excitedly to the sparkling twinkles of light.  The half obscured moon provided enough light to see by,  but not so much light that she couldn't hide in the shadows of she needed. Curling around the side of the den, Asla made her way towards the bridge that her father had built. She was very wary of the water beneath it and sunk her claws into the bridge with each step.  Once across,  she booked it through the long grass. The stripey little girl had no idea where she was going,  but her ears led the way. A gentle clucking brought grey ears swiveling about.  What was that?  A white tipped nose parted the long grass and the rest of her head followed.  Her dusty nose wiggled, testing the strange, musty scent. There was a strange sort of enclosure that instantly had her curiosity piqued.  What was inside?  Suddenly,  the noise became louder and more intense. Asla climbed onto a stack of wood pressed up against the enclosure and looked inside. A strange round creature with a bushy, striped tail was stalking towards some weird white birds. The birds were scrambling away, squawking loudly but the stripey thing managed to grab one.  It bit the bird and Asla barked as loud as she could. "Hey, those aren't your birds!"  Without a thought to her own safety (go figure) she launched herself over the fence and made a beeline towards the striped attacker. Sharp puppy teeth sank into the striped tail just as her claws bit into the flesh of its rump.  The creature squealed and chittered before turning and clamoring over the fence. Asla chased it to the fence,  growling and snapping all the while,  her little pelt bristling. Having protected her home,  the girl went back to check on the bird. It was laying on the ground.  She could see the rise and fall of its rib cage,  but the formerly white bird was red with blood. The racoon had broken one wing and had opened a big wound. Frowning, the youngling looked about.  Where was an adult when you needed one? Asleep, of course.  The chicken started to struggle,  kicking is one good leg in a panic.  Acting on instinct, the child wrapped her jaws around the birds throat and bit down hard,  cutting off its air supply. She didn't really understand what she was doing,  but she must have done something right because the bird stopped it's struggles and lay still. "Hmm" She murmured, head tilting as she poked the lifeless avian. Now she really needed an adult. Maybe if she took the bird back to her dad he could explain. Grasping the dead chicken, Asla began trying to get it over the fence. Being small was hard. "Speech"

The light-sleeping father felt the form of his youngest and littlest pup climb him. His smile was hidden behind one massive paw that stretched out in front of him as he rested. His tiny little Asla was the most precious thing in the world, and he would have burned nations for her, if he was but given a reason. He was proud if all his children of course proud of the growing bodies of his boys who each showed attributes of strength. But Asla... there was something captivating about her.

She was slow and careful as she moved over him and to freedom, doing each in little steps. Sirius never changed his breathing nor moved. He followed her with one eye and one ear, and kept them subtle. It wasnt long before she found her freedom, and perhaps it shouldn't have been pride that was buzzing inside the giant, but that was the emotion he felt.

He waited until she was just beyond the den before he moved, pulling himself slowly and carefully from the pile, and made his way towards the door. From the shadows he watched her as she looked up at the stars. She glowed, bathed in the faint blues of the stars, and her wide, dark eyes looked at the world as through it was beautiful and new. Of course, to her it was exactly that.

He watched her from the den entrance as she made her way across the bridge he had painstakingly made for the little pups, and then booked it into the grass. He lost sight of her then, a d as he quietly bounded forward, he lost time searching for her freshest scent in the grass. It didnt help that the scent of all the pups where getting stronger outside the den.

He heard the squawks of alarm from the bird and took off in that direction, intending to grab Asla before she injured the birds Zee apparently loved. When he arrived, it was to see the raccoon, and Asla as she launched herself at him. Instead of leaping after her, he hunkered down in the grass and watched as the very tiny pup gave the trash panda a taste of her mind.

After defending the bird, his tiny little daughter would return and inspect its injuries. She might have been very young, but an understanding seemed to come over here, as she delivered a killing blow, gently putting it from its misery. Intrigued by this development in the child, Sirius would watch for a few moments longer, emerging from the shadows as she made it back over the fence, dead bird in tow. "Asla" he said softly, calling her attention to where he waited.

As soon as her father's voice met her big, grey ears, Aslatiel winced and drew in on herself. She was caught. Dropping the chicken in front of her, the girls ears pulled back against her skull. "Hi, papa." He was most likely angry with her for ungrounding herself. She still didn't really know what grounding meant, but momma had told then to stay inside.

The girl lifted her huge, plum colored eyes to look up at the behemoth that was her father. She was dwarfed by his size, but that was nothing new. She suspected she would always be smaller than everyone else. "Am I in trouble?" Her small voice wavered slightly. "Are you going to tell momma? She says I'm grounded, but I don't know what that means."

Absently, she ran one toepad over the edge of a white feather. "The bird got hurt. A fat, stripey thing tried to take it." Asla replayed the moment in her mind. The striped child's brow furrowed, screwing up the markings over one eye. She growled and pounced in invisible enemy. "But I bit it and scratched it and it ran away." It had been a moment of great triumph for the girl considering she wasn't much bigger than the raccoon herself.

Sitting up once more, Asla tilted her head. "The bird was flapping. It was hurt. I wanted it to stop flapping." She remembered holding the chicken still with her teeth. Maybe she held it too well. "Why is the bird still asleep, papa?" She was too new to the world to understand death yet and so she looked to the man that she trusted for answers, her big purple eyes locked on his face with utter seriousness in their dark depths.

She winced at the sound of his voice, and some of that earlier confidence he had seen in her seemed to collapse in on itself. He got up, immediately dwarfing the tiny child, and he shuffled forward, careful not to squish her beneath a paw larger then she was. He ruffled her fur with his breath as he leaned forward. He grasped her gently in his teeth, dragging her into the space between his paws, and capturing here there gently. “No my little flower” he whispered, eyes dancing gently as he regarded her, close enough for his nose to touch hers.

“That was a raccoon” he informed her as she described the striped creature, she growled, and pounced an empty spot before him. He couldn’t help himself, he scooped her with a paw, pushing her closer and pressing a kiss to her forehead. She was so tiny that it was her face in general that he kissed more than one spot.

“You were very fierce, I saw the way it ran, tail between its legs” he complimented her, a touch of fatherly pride clear in his tone. When she asked about death, he considered it, and then touched the bird beside her with the tip of his nose. “Birds like this have multiple functions. To us, they have two. The first; is that they lay eggs. That's what your Mother Zee, and Nanny Odette use them for. The second function is meat. Your mother does not like it when we use them for meat, so these birds, in the pen, are safe from being eaten.”

He explained, and with careful motions, he moved around her, digging a feline claw into each side of the bird, and ripping gently, to show her the meat beneath the feathers. “Taste it, if you want, little Asla, but don’t hunt these birds in the future, okay?” he clarified. “What you did was kill the chicken, you ended her life, and that was okay because she was in pain, she would not have lived anyway.” he would continue with his explanation. The way he described death might not be as gentle as most fathers to their children, but Sirius was practical, and he had no attachment to this creature, and saw no need to install it in Asla - other then that of property, in which they belonged to Odette and Zee, and not the child.

Sirius scooped her up and pressed his nose to hers. Asla couldn't stop a sweet little giggle from sounding. Knowing that she wasn't in trouble lightened her mood. Standing on her hind legs, the girl grabbed her father's face between her paws and licked his muzzle. Behind her, that fluffy striped tail wagged furiously. She didn't understand why, but the girl absolutely adored nicknames. So when her father called her his little flower, she positively beamed.

When he father explained that the creator was a raccoon, Asla sat. She sat just in time for him to kiss her face which brought another girlish giggle from her. He had seen the creature run away and even called her fierce. The child bristled with pride. "It was touching our things." That was explanation enough for what she had done and why she had done it.

Sirius went on to explain about the bird. She was less interested in the uses of a chicken and more interested in the fact that she had ended is life. "So it will never wake up?" She had killed the chicken but hadn't exactly understood what that entailed. When her father pulled the chicken open, however, she understood. The chicken was alive anymore. She'd been the one to make it 'not alive.' Understanding glimmered in the girls gaze and she nodded. "Okay, papa." She agreed to not hunt chickens. Knowing that she held the power to take lives fascinated her though. There would be a great amount of killing in the future. As an afterthought, she took a bite of the dead chicken and grinned up at her father, blood coating her white maw.

Her paws felt like feathers against his face, he could not believe any creature could be so small, yet so loved. He looked to his tiny, tail-wagging daughter, and his heart hurt, he loved her so much. He could see hints of Zee in the blues and creams of her coat, and her tiny stature. He didn’t think he could ever love a woman as much as he loved Zee, but looking at his tiny daughter, he realised he was wrong. Asla held his heart just as tightly now as her mother. He grinned at her, the expression coming easily to his dark face.

“Exactly.” Sirius agreed, a touch smugly. There was the Sirius in her, the possessive streak. They were there chickens. It didn’t matter if Sirius liked the silly buggers or not, they belonged to him, and to his woman, and that meant any Raccoon that messed with them deserved to get eaten.

“Good girl” he said gently, as she agreed not to hunt Zee’s chickens. She took a bite of the dead creature, blood matting her dainty paw and the space around her muzzle. Sirius licked her paw, cleaning it of blood, and nudged her chin with his nose. Each motion had to be careful at precice around a creature as small as she was. “It’s night time, and creatures like these chickens are sleeping, would you like me to teach you how to sneak upon them?” perhaps she was too small to learn to hunt, but Sirius didn’t care for that. If she had the desire to learn, he would teach her, and eventually she would have the strength to follow through with his teachings.

She hadn't been hungry at all, but something told her that the bird shouldn't have died for no reason. The moment that her father suggested that she learn how to sneak, however. all thoughts of the chicken were abandoned. Her eyes lit up like the stars that she so enjoyed and the girl instantly found her feet. "Yes! I want to sneak!" She kept her voice low, but it thrummed with pure excitement.

Diving over the eviscerated chicken, Asla was clear of the protective arms of her father. Sinking low to the ground, she tucked her ears and pretended to sneak. Her motions were fiercely exaggerated, but most of her world was pretend. You had to exaggerate when you were pretending.

Waiting for her lesson, Asla pounced a black cricket that happened to cross her path. She was a mighty hunter. Well... not yet, but she should be! Looking back towards the hulking figure of her father, she questioned him, the cricket still trapped between her paws. "What do I do, papa? How do I sneak?"

She leaped upwards, too excited to contain it. And well her voice was low, it was clear it took effort to keep it that way. He looked down at her, shaking his head as he held in his laughter. Since she didn’t seem to have protested it thus far, he snuck in another kiss, pushing his luck as he booped his nose against hers, and licked the fur around her ears once.

She was free of his grip in a heartbeat, and he sighed at the loss of her warmth in his arms. Ah well, he couldn’t keep her there forever, her energy was too great for that. She pounced at a hapless cricket, and looked expectantly at it. He ignored the insect, she could eat it or release it as she pleased.

“Alright, first, lets get your pose right, and then we can test it out on something living” he hinted, and put his much larger frame into a slinking position. “Spread out your weight, tail a banner behind you for balance, watch where you're placing your paws, what's beneath you, will it make noise? Look for the right path, rocks and soil are quiet, leaves and twigs are not.” he began, making a slow walk around the chicken pen as he demonstrated stepping on twigs, and stepping carefully. His balance was careful and precise, showing how even a giant could move quietly if done right.

Interest in the cricket was lost as her lesson began. She released the bug and it hopped away. Learning that she could kill things had instantly made her conscious of it and so she had held the hopper gently. It had gone away undamaged.

Listening to her father, she watched as he showed her proper firm and technique. She mimicked his crouch and padded along silently behind him. Just as he did, she stepped on a leaf to show that she understood, then continued on in utter silence. She was going to be really good at this. There was no doubt in her mind.

Patience was something that she had to work on though, as she followed her father, the mesmerizing swish of his tail before her became too much. Leaping forward, she grabbed his tail between her sharp little puppy teeth and growled. Sometimes she just couldn't help herself.

He looked back at his daughter, his pride growing stronger with every second. He had a feeling stealth techniques were going to be one of Asla’s great strengths. He had another feeling that his boys, with their thick limbs and disproportionate bodies, weren’t going to be quiet any time soon.

He was startled when he felt little puppy jaws in his tail. Not that her attack did much more then startle him, her entire weight against his fur meant nothing, and well she perhaps managed to pull out a few strands in his tail, he otherwise could not feel her teeth.

Nonetheless. “Ugh!” he cried, stumbling forward, losing balance at the ferocity of her attack. He stumbled again on his next step, and toppled, felled by the girl as he collapsed heavily onto his belly. His spine was free for the taking if she wished to stalk upon her prize, and his head lay heavy against the ground.

The bite to her father's tail had brought the giant wolf to his knees. Purple eyes flashing, Asla wasted no time in scrambling up the length of her father. She jumped into his neck right behind his head and gave him a bite, shaking her little had fiercely as she pretended she was bringing down mighty prey. Deciding that her 'prey' was dead, Aslatiel threw back her head and called out to the stars, "I'm a killerrrrr!" The tiny girl then howled her pleasure into the sky until her little voice cracked.

Erupting into a fit of giggles. Asla rolled down the side of her father's body and landed with a thump in the grass. Leaping up, she took the opportunity to attack his face with nips and kisses while he was laying prone. The girl was very glad that she had ungrounded herself. The father and daughter pair wouldn't have been able to bond like this otherwise.

"Papa, what else can we kill? Do you kill everything that we eat? Does mom kill things? She seems too nice to kill things. Is that why she likes the chickens? Eggs are gross. I'd rather eat the chickens..." The little lady continued to ramble, often answering her own questions right after she asked them. Such was the way of a blooming mind.

She threw back her head and called to the stars, Sirius tossed his own head back, howling along with her. Not exactly quiet, or subtle, but it would hardly be the first time the night in Armada had echoed with his howl.

“My Fatel Little Flower” he crooned happily, as she slid down his body and onto the grass, within grabbing distance again. Before he could snag her, she leaped at him, beating him to the punchline. She was able to truly surprise him, and she definitely got in a few nips to his face, before he tossed her gently to the ground, and rubbed his nose into her tummy, making chewing and growling noises as though he was ripping her apart. His heavy breaths rippling through her fur with each growl.

He released her, and she attacked him next with questions, launching them at him too fast for him to answer. “Most of the things, yes. Eggs are not alive, herbs are not alive, but everything with meat was living.” he explained to her. “We hunt to eat, but we do not hunt for pleasure. If we kill just to enjoy ourselves, then we over-hunt an area, and we will later struggle to find enough to sustain us. If that happens, then your siblings and family members will get sick. That’s important, okay?” every moment was a lesson, and he was happy to deliver them to her. Hunting was good, over hunting was bad.

The father and daughter howled together and it was a glorious thing. Within moments, they were playing again. If ever a child squealed with guttural laughter, this was that time. Turns out, Aslatiel had a ticklish belly. With the play bites from her father, the girl laughed until tears filled her huge, dark eyes. Pressing all four paws against her father, she pushed off of his face, sliding backwards through the grass enough to get up. That was when she pummeled him with questions.

Dark ears perked and she listened to the answers that he gave. Here and there she nodded in understanding. So killing wad okay, but don't kill too much or there wouldn't be anything to eat and her family would be hungry. That, she could understand. "Okay, papa. Okay."

Without warning, a yawn pulled from the girl, ending in a slight squeak. "I might be tired, papa." She didn't want the night to end, but her eyes were getting heavy. "Will you teach me how to kill big things? Bigger than me?" The prospect made the pup wiggle with excitement.

“I will” he agreed, quieting down as yawns began to split her muzzle. He grabbed her again, he was comfortable dragging her around gently in his teeth, and didn’t hesitate to do so at any given moment. This time, he dragged her into the space between his forpaws again, and nestled his head into the grass beside her, his muzzle inches from her body.

“I’ll show you how to take on anything you wish, and win. You must always have the strength to defend yourself, because I love you too much for anything in this world to take you from me.” his voice was quiet, subdued and serious. Asla was the smallest of his litter, but he quite possibly loved her the most. She would need the knowledge of how to take on things stronger than herself.

“But for the moment, lie with me, and watch the stars” he murmured, pulling her closer, indicating she should rest against his muzzle as through it was a pillow. It would be the perfect place to rest against and look up at the dark sky. He hadn’t much love for the stars himself, but he had seen her appreciation of them, and would admire them, for her sake.

A girl couldn't ask for a better father. He promised to teach her things. Anything that she wanted to know. There were soooo many things that she wanted to know, so the big man had his work cut out for him. Aslatiel Fatalis had a ravenous mind. She would learn it all.

When Sirius spoke of teaching her to keep her safe, the girls brow furrowed. "I'll keep you safe too, papa." She came close and nuzzled into his big, dark muzzle. "You're mine. You, momma, Indy, Az and Mort. You're all mine." The novelty of the comment was lousy on the girl, but damn if she wasn't his daughter.

Curling up next to her father's big, blocky head, Asla rested on her back and looked up at the stars. "They're pretty, huh?" With one little paw, she pointed upwards. "That big one doesnt move.. The little ones look like they move, but I don't think they do either." She watched the stars every chance that she got. They would forever be of interest to the tiny girl.

Another yawn hit. After that, another. Aslatiel’s eyes were very heavy. She could close them for just a minute, right? Soon.the child was asleep, her little body curled info the warmth of her father's protective form.

He had to laugh at that, a rich, warm chuckle deep in his throat. “I am yours, and you are mine.” he agreed easily. She was definitely his daughter, no doubt about it. She might be small, but he had a feeling she would grow to be a wolf no one wanted to mess with. It would help, of course, with a large and angry father towering above her.

I know you will.” he agreed, thinking more of their other children and mother than himself. He couldn’t imagine Asla stepping in front of anything to defend him - or at least, not that he would allow.

She pointed up at the stars and made comments, but Sirius was looking at his daughter, and not what was above them. “They are amazing.” he agreed, kissing what part of her side he could reach without disturbing her. Soon she was yawning again, and sleep would swiftly take her. The soft breathing of her tiny body soothed, deepening, and he had no doubt that she had slipped into slumber. He pulled a paw tighter around her, cradling her in his arms, and would lie awake beside her, as he once had for her mother any time they had slept together before he had tamed his nightmares.