Grizzly Hollow this great wide world of mine

It was a bit strange, venturing out every day. Oh, it was always done with some form of supervision, and Felix never did stray far from the den. His curiosity did not require him to venture far and wide, for even the smallest things were still of a great wonder to the boy. The feeling of the grass on his feet, the way the sun shone down in beams, even a collection of pebbles could keep him entertained for hours if one of his sisters did not putter by to interrupt his thought.

Felix had similar aspirations for that afternoon, pleasantly warm and not too bright. His puppy blues shone with delight as he tottered out of the den while his parental units still dozed. Content to add more rocks to his growing pile, he reached down for a particularly black, shiny one when it scuttled right out of the way.

The pup blinked in surprise, bending closer to sniff – and to his great shock, the pebble scuttled again, tiny legs carrying it across the dirt. “No!” he cried in distress, padding after the small object. He wanted to see it! To study it, to know it! It was unlike any rock he’d ever seen before. “Stop!” But the rock did not seem to want to listen…

Felix has found himself a beetle.

Despite being the smallest of the new clan, Ophelia refused to be the forgotten runt. Of course, she'd never heard the term before or believed there was anything wrong with her small stature. No one had told her otherwise. In fact, everyone seemed to give her extra treats! Well, the adults did. Her siblings weren't as good about sharing. That was okay, though because Opie was especially talented at stealing.

The pale princess watched her brother from between Mama's paws, young sky blue eyes dazzling with interest. She made a play to be grooming Mama's paws, but really, she was planning. Felix's pile of pebbles was asking to be disturbed, but her ears pinned farther forward with intrigue as one of his proposed targets skittered away from him.

Wiggling her bum in preparation, Ophelia flopped clumsily over Mama's paw and raced straight for Felix's walking pebble. She zoomed over fast enough to stumble into her bigger brother, but recovered quickly enough to pounce right on top of his pebble. In the manner of true puppy nature, the little princess dipped her head to grab it in her mouth and was rewarded by squirming little feet along her tongue. Ophelia spat out the beetle before immediately grabbing it once more and crunching it in her mouth. Though the taste left something to be desired, she turned to her brother with a sly smile.

"Mine," she declared proudly.

While Ophie was hoarding Mama and Felix was counting his rock pile, Joan took the first watch. She didn't want her mother to have to feel so vigilant—that woman was clearly in need of a break, with Ophie hanging on her and everything—and more than anything she wanted to be old enough to help out around the pack like the adults did. The great wide world she had stumbled into a week ago turned out to be in a constant buzz, wolves walking around all headed to one place or another. It was enough to make her little heart sick with jealousy. But she had her siblings and her mother to think of. She could not simply go charging off. Instead, her back to the mounting tension and her eyes trained on the woods, she searched for anything out of the ordinary or suspicious in any way. There was a leaf off to her left that was a particularly dodgy character. She didn't like the way he was flapping. 

Vaguely she heard Felix's cries, but her concentration was so narrowed on the leaf that at first she only half turned her head, eyes still on the fluttering leaf. It wasn't until she heard the pawsteps of her sister approaching, a sickening crunch and what seemed like her favourite word ("mine") that Joan's eyes suddenly jumped back to her family. Her eyes widened. Then they narrowed.

Strutting righteously over, she wasted no time in accusing her sister, "Ophie what you do. What you do to Felix?" Felix had been saying things like "no" and "stop" she realized. These were words Ophie didn't really understand. Or she pretended that she didn't. The effect was the same. "You spit out now."

(This post was last modified: Jun 07, 2016, 01:10 AM by Sahalie.)

Joan @ ~8 months: Adult fur and winter coat grown in, eyes are now grey, nearly adult sized. Human age ~11-12

Felix, utterly enraptured in his newest discovery, did not hear the approach of his sister, however graceless it might have been.  With his nose to the ground, he scurried after the walking pebble right up until @Ophelia appeared at his side.  Before he could say anything, the youngest of the Maceio trio had scooped up the beetle in her mouth.  “No!” her brother cried, blue eyes widening.  She spat it out, much to his relief – and then she gobbled it right back up, crunching it until it was nothing.

“Mine,” she said, with all the comity of a proper princess, as if the novelty really had been hers all along.

Puppy blues grew wider, a gathering wetness stinging there as the young boy blinked. “Why?” he needed to know.  He would have shared the rock!  What did she eat it?  He sniffed hard, trying to force back the oncoming tide of emotion when the eldest appeared.  Felix was drawn to her side immediately, ears laid back against his skull.  “Ate it,” he told her, sniffing again. “Rock.  Moving rock!” There was no getting it back, he knew, not after the pale princess had mashed it against her teeth. What if he never saw anything like it ever again?

Why would she do that?

(This post was last modified: Jun 07, 2016, 02:33 PM by Felix.)

Shallow water has trapped several fish in a small pond. Hunt Opportunity

Spotting her brother's quivering lip from the corner of her eye, Ophelia blew out an annoyed breath. For being so much bigger than her, he sure cried a lot. Real tears, that was. The pale princess had already mastered crocodile tears to get her way. She was about to give her brother a sharp tug on his ear to make him buck up when Miss Alpha came along to ruin all her fun.

As always, Joan leapt to accuse her as if she were at fault! Unbelievable! If @Felix wanted it so bad, he should have been faster than her. Lifting her muzzle importantly - though it remained well below her sister's due only to size restraints - Ophelia glared at @Joan straight on. "You not Mama," the littlest pup pointed out. Only Mama (Or Dada or Papa) could tell her what to do. As far as she was concerned, everyone else should bow to her whims.

Turning to Felix, she stuck out her tongue, showing little bits of beetle exoskeleton still caught there. "Crier," she accused. Still...she did feel maybe a little bad. Slanting her eyes at her brother, she smirked. "Can find one first," Ophelia boasted, certain she could find another thing like what she ate. It definitely wasn't a rock. His head was filled with rocks, rocks, rocks! That thing was different and she was gonna find another and show it to Mama and prove it.

(This post was last modified: Jun 07, 2016, 11:38 PM by Ophelia.)

@Felix

Taking sides was a physical thing for the young minds, and she could feel Felix at her side now. She pressed against him, hoping to provide comfort even in the aftermath of his loss. With horror she listened to her younger brother describe what had happened in as much detail as he could manage. He accused Ophie of eating a rock that moved. Her silver ears swivvled on top of her head, trying to make sense of this. Was Ophie dumb enough to eat rocks? Mean enough, maybe. That's all it took.

Her pale sister tipped her face up like she was some kind of queen and that was enough to make Joan want to smack her. A snort came out of her nose in response to Ophie's challenge. Joan had never said she was Mama or tried to be Mama. Joan just tried to be good, which was more than Ophie ever did. Ophie didn't know what the right thing was half the time, just what she wanted. "You not Felix. Felix moving rock," she tried to explain as calmly as she could, though her haughty tone crept out just the same.

When Ophie claimed that she could find another rock, Joan hesitantly brightened. "Find for Fe" Was Ophie going to make up for her transgressions against her brother? That was awfully big of her. For all the annoying in Ophie, Joan was still determined to see or create a good side in the girl. "C'mon Fe find rock!" she butted his shoulder with her own, her nose already snuffling against the ground in search of a new moving rock for her brother. She would be the one to find it first.

Joan @ ~8 months: Adult fur and winter coat grown in, eyes are now grey, nearly adult sized. Human age ~11-12

@Ophelia

Crier, the girl accused, and Felix only stared back with a furrowed brow and glassy blue eyes. As if his sister stood to scold him on such a thing! He’d seen Ophelia break out the tears more times than he could count. He might have said as much, had he not been terribly distracted by the bits of pieces on the girl’s pink tongue. The boy gave a shudder. No, those were definitely not for eating.

But what came next was entirely unexpected – not Joan offering to help, but Ophelia insisting that she would be able to find Felix a walking rock before anyone else did. Oversized ears pricked forward like little radar dishes as he glanced from one sibling to the other before giving a vigorous nod. “Yes,” he agreed happily, bumping his shoulder right back into the eldest of the trio. “Find rock. Walking rock.”

Not just any rock would do, after all.

Pressing his wet, black nose back to the ground, Felix resumed his usual pebble-seeking habitats, zigzagging across the earth methodically in a much more organized pattern than one might expect from a toddler his age. Still, his thin tail was wriggling as he wormed around with both sisters, delighted with the fact all three were getting along.

He came upon a much larger rock then, and nosing it over, he gave a delighted shriek. So many!

“Looooooooook!”

As @Joan began to get all high and mighty again, the littlest princess rolled her eyes. Or tried to. Emulating the eyeroll she'd spotted another packmate do when annoyed, her puppy blue eyes glanced skyward before falling back to the ground. As if she didn't know that she wasn't Felix. Well, duh! Who wanted to be that block-headed goober? Not her!

At her sister's insistence that she find the 'moving rock' for her brother, she snorted. She said she'd find one first, not that it would be for him! But as each of the pups began their search, Ophelia's claim was forgotten and she began to look simply for the looking.

Surprisingly, Felix found one first. After a moment of pouting, Ophelia trotted over to peer at all of the squirming, wriggling, shiny bodies. The boy's delight was infectious, spreading to the pale princess. She grinned at her siblings and excitedly made to grab Felix's ear in play, though toppled in her inexperience right onto his pile of shiny walking rocks. Ophelia yipped with alarm as she felt the little buggers squirm under her back and stood as quickly as she could manage to get away from them.

"They ew," she claimed.

@Felix

Joan's strong suit was morals: not finding. Felix, with his fervor for counting and sorting various items was very good at finding. Naturally, he came across the moving rocks first. Her eyes were wide and uncertain when he nosed over the rock to reveal a multitude of these writhing black critters. But Ophie had eaten one and she was alright, so they had to be okay. And Felix was quite happy, and that was the most important thing anyway. She locked her legs and watched their chaotic, random movement, feeling like the bugs were sort of unhappy to suddenly be in the sunlight. It felt a little wrong to have taken the rock off of them.

Ophie, of course, was never content to just look and Joan was not surprised when the little sister tried to instigate some play and accidentally fell over into the mass of wiggly rocks. For once, though, she noted her sister's slightly rattled demeanor as she jumped up, out of the bugs, with disgust. This was new. "You okay?" Joan asked with genuine concern knitted in her eyebrows, knowing that this was usually what Ophie wanted: someone's sympathy. She looked alright, though, so she tipped her head to look at Felix, "What moving rocks do?" As if he would know. As if anyone could know.

Joan @ ~8 months: Adult fur and winter coat grown in, eyes are now grey, nearly adult sized. Human age ~11-12