IIIXKitsuneXIII

Neve had never seen a two-legger before. She watched curiously as the two-leggers moved around a large wooden box on wheels, pulled by large, hooved quadrupeds with short horns from the center of their faces. The two-leggers themselves were Interesting. Walking on their hind legs. They seemed hooved, but it was hard to tell with the cloth and wrappings around them. Some had short, swept back horns that stood out against their white fur. Others--larger, bulkier figures--had rows and fangs and deeper, darker colors in their fur. They hadn’t noticed her yet, which she was grateful for. She kept low, moved carefully. Just because she’d left the Forest didn’t mean she wanted to be found by those outside of it. And two-leggers were the biggest concern. They were speaking to each other, or at least she assumed the noises they were making were some sort of language. She caught a word here or there, or… thought she did. They were too scattered for her to parse. They were laughing, chatting to

A flash split the dark sky, and thunder rolled overhead, deafening and shaking the group to their very core. Rain soaked sand tugged at the paws of the travelers, and mud sloshed away from the cliff side as they climbed higher. And with every paw step, she hated the wretched creatures in front of her more. Seven cubs, there had been seven cubs total. Falkenrath’s ceased labor had been a false alarm, by dawn he’d been pacing and snarling again as another wave of labor took him, and three more piles of misery had entered the world. They still hadn’t figured out the cause of the delay, and Falkenrath, her beautiful beautiful Falkenrath, had only purred and cooed over the new cubs and guided them to his teats instead of doing the sensible thing and culling half the litter--whatever his plans were, he certainly didn’t need seven miserable bundles of fur and feathers under foot. Now, the cubs were mobile, and as if the gods were mocking them, there was a cyclone bearing down against the