In Dire Straits

Excitement hummed in her blood, toxic and thick and ill-contained. She found it difficult to put that sensation into words. She found it difficult to decipher they why and how behind it. All that she knew, all that she could feel, was an indescribable urge to act—

--to run, to tussle, to roll around, to be destructive in all the right ways.

It was all so challenging to understand, to sit still in the den, to wearily listen to Mother talk about this or that with the coming and going company when all she really wanted to do was bite into something and shake it up! Shake it up like all the older wolves had done but a scant few moons ago, spilling red on the ground with their mean snarls and growls.

It had been terrifying. It had been fun. It had been… something but she just couldn’t put her paw on what. And, goodness, she was far to embarrassed to ask Mother about it, about all the gurgling feelings in her belly and chest and all the rambling thoughts shifting round and round like so many storms—red tinted and striking…

So she’d wandered away from the den, huffing and puffing and grunting—ignoring the lumbering wolf that followed her, a make-shift nanny wolf or guardian or some such rubbish Mother had mentioned. She hadn’t much cared about it, not when all she wanted to do was go go go. Anything to ease that crawling biting itchy feeling in her limbs.

Restlessness, is what it was, but she was too young to really grasp the concept of it.

But it’s why she’s bumbling about, all fat and clumsy, leaping at shadows and snarling at bugs, around a fallen rotting log, that she’d tumble right on over a dead nasty little rat.

It’s… jarring, and she screams.

Typical, isn’t it.

For a moment all she could hear was the rapid thunk, thunk, thunk of her heart against her chest. Her entire world, her entire universe, had narrowed down to the unmoving flesh and meat in front of her. She shifted slightly, if only so she could scoot a bit away from the thing as her mind attempted to process what it was and—

And naturally, her performance had been visible to a stranger—literal, in the sense that this was a shiny odd smelling wolf and didn’t carry the usual scent that screamed home to her.  And, despite the fact that lil’ Artie is now combing the space around them—for an adult, in case the other is a bit too strange—she is listening to the fact that the meat-thing is just a rat.

A rat.

O-of course it was just a rat!

She’s quick to scramble to her feet, chest puffed out, fur wild—but she’s steady, at least, and the tremble in her limbs has eased. Scared? Hah!

“I’m not afraid,” She drawled slow and careful, “Mm… it came outta nowhere!”

That had been startling!

But, she won’t deny that there is something very calming about being told that it wouldn’t hurt her, couldn’t hurt her… and that’s enough to get her to ease up on her odd forced posture of not-very-great dominance.

“Good, good…” because, if it’s one thing she understands, it is the concept of pain.

But, the other is moving to snatch up the rat tail in her teeth, “Wutcha doin’?”

She wags her butt a bit, “I wanna see too!”