Sporadic Lorwolf Creations

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“Mum!” “Mother!”

Oh dear, was Skyndi’s first thought as the two pups came careening towards her, quickly followed by: what now?

She swiftly rolled up their precious map from the mat she had been studying it on, trying to work out their route for the next few weeks, and put it back into the case so that it would be well out of range of puppy mishaps and, more importantly, out of the way so that she might give her children her full attention.

Just in time too, because a couple of seconds later, small auburn and greyscale bodies rammed into her chest.

Oof.

The puppies might still be puppies, but they were growing swiftly and when they came at you at full tilt without making any effort to slow down, that’s still a fair bit of force.

“Mum-” Gaetinn barely had the chance to begin in a tone of extreme distress (oh no no no- who dares) before Fraekn started crying into her fur.

(Someone was going to bleed for this.)

She gathered them close, whereupon Gaetinn also burst into tears, so she just focused on embracing them and licking them and soothing them.

“Oh my little snowdrops, I’m here, mummy’s got you, you’re safe. I’m here. Breathe, my little ones, slow breaths, everything is going to be alright.”

Once their sobs stilled and the tension had bled out of them, leading to them slumping boneless into her embrace, she carefully licked the tears away and asked in her gentlest warmest tones:

“Now, what brought this on my snowdrops? Why are you so upset?”

Which led to a fascinating exchange that the pups probably didn’t even register that they made, but which was firmly logged under ‘evidence supporting bloody vengeance’ in Skyndi’s mind. It went like this:

Gaetinn looked at Fraekn, who took longer to gather herself, but eventually looked back and sniffled at her sibling, giving them big tearful puppy-eyes which made Gaetinn’s expression go from inquiring to very determined, giving their sister a nod before Fraekn buried herself back into Skyndi’s fur with a barely audible whine.

“The pups here were mean, mum.” Gaetinn burst out. “Super-duper mean! And they made Fraekn upset!”

“Oh?” Skyndi carefully nudged her daughter. “Would you like to tell me what they did to upset you so, snowdrop?”

Her efforts were awarded with another whine and her daughter clinging even closer. Very well, no explanation to be had from her; whatever it was had upset her daughter enough that she could not even speak of it.

Skyndi put another tally mark in the ‘this will require bloody vengeance’ column right before Gaetinn continued in a very concerning rush of words:

“We were winning over them in tag but then they said that Fraekn couldn’t play with us anymore because she wasn’t supposed to be there, because she wasn’t part of their pack and when I said that of course she’s not, she’s my sister, she’s in our pack and that means she’s a guest and they can’t be mean to her, they said that- that…” and here all the air and courage seemingly abandoned her pup and they shrunk in on themselves, throwing a… guilty(?) glance at their sister before continuing in a disheartened mumble. “Then they said that she isn’t really my sister because she was never in your belly…”

Prior to having pups, Skyndi never would have imagined it was possible to feel so much all at once, but her little ones had irrevocably widened the space in her heart and now she felt incredible love and worry and rage all at the same time, as well as some sickening guilt, because the ones who had said this were pups and as much as she wanted to tear into them to make them regret ever hurting her children, she couldn’t, because they were just pups and if they had said something like that, it would only be because they had been taught to say and think such things and it wouldn’t truly be their fault.

Hugging her little ones, Skyndi desperately wished that she could preserve their precious innocence, that she was capable of shielding them from ever experiencing cruelties like this.

The only thing she could do in a situation like this was damage containment after the fact, but that would never be enough to prevent her pups from being harmed to begin with. Still, a pack whose pups did not understand or respect bonds of salt… a pack like that would not be as valuable an ally or trading partner as she had hoped when they came into this territory in hopes of negotiating for some form of long-term contract.

Her daughter – unaware that her mother was gleefully mentally ripping apart any and all plans Gangleri had made to approach this pack for a more permanent deal – chose that moment to make her metaphorically set them on fire and pull out the war table.

“Gaetinn! You left out the part where they kept trying to tell you that you had to be a boy or a girl and that you had to tell them which one it was! Mother, they did, and it was horrible, even before the sibling thing, but Gaetinn got stubborn and didn’t want to leave so we settled on beating them instead and then they got even meaner.”

…

Oh yes. This pack would see a significant decrease in trading partners over the coming year if Skyndi had anything to say about it …and she did, because she had made sure she did, spinning her web of connections across Icerun.

It seemed that it was time to make use of it; they could find honour, or they could slowly decline and fall apart in isolation as Skyndi put the warning out to all packs who wandered the trading routes of Icerun that this one did not respect bonds of salt and was not to be trusted.

“Oh they did, did they now?”

“...mother, father has said that we’re to remind you to ‘talk about things with him before you try to hurt someone’ when you look like that.”

“Fraeken, why’d you have to remind her? I was looking forward to siccing scary-mum on the meanies!”

Skyndi huffed a surprised laugh. These two troublemakers, she thought affectionately, one with my temper and Frodr’s stubbornness, the other with my viciousness and Frodr’s cunning. They’ll go far, and they’ll see my fur grey before its time.

“I’m afraid your sister has a point, Gaetinn.” Carefully lifting her pups up by their scruffs and setting them on their paws, Skyndi dissolved the cuddle pile. “Come on my snowdrops, up we get, let’s go find Frodr, yeah? I think he’d also like to know of this so that he can help me in hugging you and making it all better.”

And with burning this pack’s reputation to the ground, Skyndi privately added to herself.