Fireheart and Soullinger being cute together!

    She’d stopped by Pinkerton’s pile that day just the same as every other day. It was kind of a crapshoot, she knew. Usually she just got junk, but who knows, perhaps today Soullinger would get something good.

    He pushed her towards the back of the pile, rushing her through any attempt at selection. She was used to that. Pinkerton was always worried that his sister would catch him giving this stuff away before she had a chance to catalog it. But it Soullinger had been paying attention, perhaps she wouldn’t have reached in quite where she did.

    “Ahhh!”

    She jerked her paw out. There was a wolf attached by the teeth to her foreleg.

Fireheart struck out on his own as soon as he reached majority. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his family, but it was a large clan, and he felt... lost, within it. Besides, the elders were beginning to worry about the weight of the nest and how much longer it could hold. They were starting to suggest that perhaps the younglings and some families might wish to begin their own clans, in hopes of forestalling the collapse of the clan’s nest. So he set out, eventually finding a beautiful cliff face under a magma fall where he could build a proper nest. He was settled just inside a cave, and in no time began to feel at home in his new nest.

It didn’t take long, however, for him to begin to feel lonely. He’d grown up surrounded by friends and family, cousins and nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles. He found it was cold and lonely in a nest all by himself, and he started to wonder whether he’d made the right decision in choosing to leave.

A noise woke Fireheart up early one morning, an odd snuffling snorting noise. He crawled out of his nest to find a huge furry dragon sniffing at it. He stared at her for a moment, still sleepy and confused as to where she’d come from.

 “Hello little dragon! I like your cave!” She looked quite excited to see him, and he shifted his crest to express pleasure/gratitude/embarrassment.

 “It’s not precisely my cave, simply my nest,” he said, and his crest shifted further into embarrassment when she stretched her neck up further to sniff him. That didn’t seem to deter her, however.

 “I like it! Can I live here with you? There’s lots of room!” she said. He was surprised that she seemed to have so much tone in her voice, but he didn’t know what that meant. He would, eventually, learn.

Moving his crest again, he attempted to express acquiescence, but when she still stared at him expectantly, he verbalized his agreement.

 It was nice to no longer be alone.

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Her name was Soullinger, and she was completely different from anyone Fireheart had ever known. Communicating was difficult, but after their first clutch was born, he didn’t miss it so much. Two Fae girls gave him someone to talk to who naturally understood what he was trying to say. Having grown up with a Tundra mother, though, they understood her better in some ways than he ever had, and were able to assist in translation as Soullinger and Fireheart learned how to function as a couple, and as matriarch/patriarch of their own clan.

Soullinger was the stronger of the two from the start, and so it was natural that she would be the one to go out scavenging for food and supplies. As Winterheart and Ladystar grew older, they would sometimes join her in her gathering. Meanwhile Fireheart would stay at home, taking care of the domestic chores. It was a good system, and continues to work out for the clan.

On her trips out, at times Soullinger will stumble upon lost ororphaned younglings. The first time she brought home younglings, a pair of orphaned Mirror boys, Fireheart was stunned, and a little upset with her. Didn’t they have enough trouble feeding the younglings they had? But eventually he came to understand her large heart and caring nature, and would take in any younglings she found as his own. The boys became welcome playmates and eventually on-again-off-again partners to their own girls, and the clan continued to grow.

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