How Joyous The {Sound}

[Pocket Kitsune]

[atrb=border,0,true][cs=7][bg=F4D179] For many long weeks, their world had been only a fragile balance of darkness and pale shadows. The sole exception to this was the pale circlet, like a dull and ill-polished crown resting on a nest of darkly unkempt hair, of the sky. It hovered in it's phasing colors at the mouth to their world, and yet, the only thing they knew of it was the faint whispers of exotic and confusing scents that lingered on the pelt of their mother like some dream of some half-remembered scent of a perfume whose name their tiny tongues and minds alike stumbled over time and again. But as weeks passed and limbs grew longer, so did their impatience, spurred on by the milkteeth of their curiosity. Once frail and short limbs had lengthened into the shadow of the elegant heirs they would one day grow to be. Their pelts, once an earthen, faded whisper of dull grays and duns, had at last shed their dull, uniform colors in exchange for their true pelts, much as the caterpillar exchanges pale skin for wings within the breathless and miraculous hang of their transparent cocoon. More and more often, Amaya would return to the den to find the pups halfway up the sloping mouth, their eyes squinting in the light, their nostrils wide and quivering, and their reedy voices piping in her ear with a million questions that made her smile in both delight and weary patience. And now the time had come at last. The den was far too small for four squirming, rapidly growing bodies. And so today would be the day that the world would become theirs--and that the pack would greet them at last. Heine was first to speak, as ever. Colored like his father, with his same coarse and briskly demanding way of phrasing things, he sprawled over Amaya's forepaws, his minute head canted to the left. "Mother. What's outside? You've said you would show us for weeks now," came the impatient huff. It was immediately taken up by the cries of his siblings, the question turned demanded now echoed by three, as maddening as any Greek Chorus in it's eager repetition. Amaya shook her head, a smile touching her lips. "Did I?"she teased in turn, her expression and words drifting into mocking thoughtfulness, as if she had to strain to remember any such promise. "You did, you did!" came the reassuring squeaks, their bodies a dervish of activity as they leaped and twisted and wagged. "I guess I did, didn't I? Come then," she said, rising to her feet abruptly. "Let me show you." And so she began to walk, her pups at her heels, all but vibrating with excitement as they crested the mouth of the den and were suddenly out, taking their first breaths of autumn air.

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