the last unicorn

^^

@Fiora @Orel @Rigby (and other elysium wolves)

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In the many (er, two) weeks that followed the birth of Harper’s children, the Divine had been treated and tended to like a saint and holy woman that she was not. Constant visitors who either came to check up on Harper and the children, or simply wanted to see them to weep at their cuteness, or simply to familiarize the children with the scents of the pack.

She could speak to them often; singing or humming gentle tunes while they slept or while they nursed from her. When visitors came, Harper would allow them to speak to them as well; stories of adventure, or just idle conversation.

Today, though; today Harper was able to sleep in. Until she heard the squeaks from her children, and Harper awoke with a gasp, eyes wide and looking around. There was a child on her head; another two at her side, and one of those, Orel, was somehow upside down with his paws in the air.

She couldn’t help but to giggle in wonder if that was simply how he slept. Didn’t one of her brothers have a similar sleeping pattern?

Gently lowering her head to allow her little girl to slide down her face, Harper moved to gently groom over them softly.

“Who’s awake and ready to explore the day, hm?” Harper would coo, though she doubted if they would find their voices so soon.

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The red pup found himself wandering around outside the dens again, feeling braver as the weeks went on and much more sure of himself. He wouldn't admit it, but his tendency to go off on his own was fueled partly by his desire to stay as far away from his littermates as he could; they teased him too much and he was tired of feeling bad. Were other families like this, he wondered? Was it normal to feel this way?

Scuffing his paw in the dirt absent-mindedly, he had started off toward a particularly interesting set of rocks in the distance to explore - maybe there would be bugs inside the crevices! - when his ear swiveled back, catching the sound of his aunt's voice. Alder perked up visibly. It sounded like they were old enough to play!

Changing course, he marched back toward Harper's den, poking his head in with an eager smile. “Aunt Harper!” he called, tail wagging. “Can I come in?”

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^^Harper had not expected a response yet; they were barely two weeks old, and Harper didn’t have a clue when babies found their voices yet. They wiggled and made cute puppy noises, as another little voice drifted into her den, and Harper looked over her shoulder towards the cutest little face of a darling nephew.

“Well hey there, cutie pie.” Harper cooed to him with a motherly smile, and tilt of her head. “Of course you can come in, m’love.”

Such manners, Harper would always be impressed by them especially in comparison to the way of Violet, the one true D’yavol that walked this earth.

“Having a good day today, ангел? — angel”

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Alder crept in surreptitiously, walking with careful steps so as not to disturb his cousins.

“Yes, тетя Харпер, — Aunt Harper” he responded dutifully, making sure he practiced his Russian as he had been taught. It seemed important to Valeska in particular that he and his siblings were bilingual, apparently not wanting to lose what remained of her past along with Harper. He thought it a strange language, a bit rough-sounding, but as long as it made her happy he would dutifully endure.

He glanced down at the pups absently, nodding when Harper addressed him.

“Yeah,” he said, unblinking. “I can't find Mama, so I was lookin' around... have you seen how big the lake is? It's huge! I wanted to go in but a wet finny thing jumped up and scared me. What are they?” Alder at last broke his gaze and looked up into his aunt's eyes, molten fire meeting bright amethyst. Her eyes were a lot like Amaranth's, he mused, which was weird because they weren't related at all. They felt comforting in a way - familiar. Or they would have been, if Amaranth didn't always get up and walk away when he approached her...

“What's outside our home?” he asked suddenly. “Like - are there other packs? Other wolves? I wanna see them - I wanna go there!”

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^^Harper watched the little fire as he crept into her den, tiptoeing around as not to disturb her sleeping brood. Such a perfect, careful little bean; he would be a great older brother cousin to them. She smiled at him softly, her amethyst purple eyes gazing over him with a certain softness, as if he was the most beautiful creature on all of Canis.

At this moment, he was. He wondered where his mothers were, and why he couldn’t find them. Last time this occurred, Valeska was being hauled off by boars.

“There is an entire world out there for you to explore, my darling aнгел.” Harper cooed softly, giggling as he mentioned this thing called a wet finny. Gods, why couldn’t his sister be so gentle, and innocent?

She wanted to reach out and kiss his little face.

So she did, drooling over the majority of his darling little face. Don’t play favorites, Harper. No no, that wasn’t what this was. How could it be, when the others didn’t visit her? “The wet finny is called a fish! It’s a little, scaly thing that lives in the water and instead of breathing the air like we do, it breathes water. Just like how Violet breaths acid and toxic air? Like that.” She would say, without missing a beat.

“Around our home we have the tundra to the north. It’s bright, qhite and beautiful as far as the eye can see. To the west, we have other wolves; a lot of them! I don’t know all of them. Down below, we have the plains; it’s a bunch of flat, boring land. Not many wolves there. When you’re older, and when your cousins are older, we can go on an adventure. Would you like that? ”

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Harper's long tongue slapped across his face like a wet sponge, and he closed his eyes stressfully, trying to enjoy it. Aunt Harper's kisses were always so damp, but he couldn't fault her; she was a naturally loving and expressive individual. To deny her such things would be cruel.

He just... didn't like being so gross afterward.

Giving her a strained smile, he let her go on to describe the - fish, she called it. Harper's explanation was eye-opening and made perfect sense to the boy, as his sister did breathe toxic air and poison, so he caught on very quickly. He nodded eagerly, fascinated. He wondered what it looked like underwater, if there were vast mountain vistas and long, empty fields like they had above ground; one day, Alder promised himself, he would find out.

“Wow,” the child breathed, scooting closer. “Aunt Harper, have you seen where fishes live? Is it cool? What's it like? Do they make dens too?”

Her description of the surrounding territories was beyond tempting to the little red pup, who so dearly longed to see it all - Fate's Respite was nice, but what treasures lay beyond their limited scope? Alder pictured himself at the center of the endless plains, standing tall atop a large hill, his gaze able to see any movement for miles around.
How freeing.

Snapping out of his reverie, he bobbed his head enthusiastically. “Yeah! That sounds great! I want to see it all - I want to see the tundra! The plains! Everywhere there is to see!” he said, tail thumping the ground. “Oh - Aunt Harper, one of them is awake, I think. That's... uh... what is her name?”

He felt terrible forgetting, but his puppy-brain only had room for so much.

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^^This child had been born red, somehow, but Harper surely felt that he was red from all the love Harper was going to smother in him. He scooted closer, and Harper welcomed him to, wagging her tail and smiling down at him.

Every child was perfect, excluding his dreadful, dreadful sister. “I have seen and swam, and visited the fishies.” They’d almost taken her life, too, but she didn’t want to tell him that. “They live in grass that grows under the water, called seaweed, and coral. They live there, and hide there from bigger fish that would eat them.”

Fiora began to move, wiggling over Harper’s paws and the new mother smiled softly; Alder was quick to point this out as well. “This is Fiora, Alder. She’s my little petal.” Harper cooed softly, not minding that he forgot their names.

She made a gently cooing sound, coming down to nuzzle and groom her little girl as she looked up at Alder. “Do you want to come and say hi?”

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Aunt Harper had gone swimming with fish? He couldn't picture it - he wasn't even allowed ankle-deep in the lake yet, what with Valeska always fretting about him falling in and drowning (a callback to @Akira's plight, but she didn't want to traumatize the other kids so soon with that story). The thought was mind-boggling. He imagined how colorful it must be down there, how strange everything probably looked, all finny and long and this weird 'coral' and 'seaweed' stuff - were there trees, too? The little red pup wanted so badly to know, but he knew Mama would be upset.

Sigh. Maybe Harper could take him to do that, too.

“How big do fish get?” he asked, morbid curiosity taking hold. “Like - bigger than wolves? I've only seen shadows as long as my tail in the water here. What do they taste like? Are fish good?”

He'd been trying for a while to catch a mouse and try one of them, but they were far too quick and small for his clumsy paws to get at just yet.

Harper then motioned him over to introduce her daughter, the only one of the litter. She was small and surprisingly white with dark brown splotches, still not quite developed into her permanent markings, and she wriggled desperately further into her mother for attention. He smiled, but felt strange - he was afraid to come closer in case she got injured by proximity.
With careful, quiet steps he approached at last, bending down to give her a long, studious sniff; she smelled good.

“Um - hello, Fiora! Or, Petal,” he added quickly, unsure which name was preferred. “Aunt Harper, what do you think she's gonna be like when she grows up?”

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^^Harper was officially going to adopt Valeska’s best children as her own. There was no way around it. Alder and Sreda were hers; her sisters could keep the rest. Alder’s curiosity had Harper tilting her head in wonder.

“Well, I suppose it depends on the size of the lake, hm? The fish in Elysium can’t be that big because the lake isn’t that big, but in the ocean… I gather they could become quite large.” Harper had never seen a whale before, or anything sizeable in their lake, but she was sure that they existed.

“They are… flat.” Harper cooed softly, nodding her head around some. “Like a flattened mud pie, or a squashed frog. They aren’t covered in feathers like birds, or fur like me and you; they have these hard, rough things called scales that need to be removed before you can eat them. They have large, bug-like eyes, like Violet has; I reckon your Mama caught the god of fish when she prayed for you guys.”

Or maybe one of the Five was really a fish. “It would explain why those nighttime farts smell so bad.. ”

Harper smirked, watching her darling nephew greet her daughter with the wag of her tail. “Hm. No matter what happens, they’ll all be perfect just like you are. Perfect in every way.”

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The idea that creatures could grow based on their environment was crazy. So how come he never saw any monstrous wolves walking around? Everybody was about the same size - even Aunt Harper, who, while tall for a female, still fit within the bounds of reasonable expectations. Alder shook his head, not really understanding why water-stuff was so different from land-stuff.

“Flat? Scales?” he repeated incredulously. “That's so weird. I want to catch one! Maybe next week you can show me?”

Alder mostly wanted to see what a fish tasted like, but the mention of Violet put him off almost immediately. He made a 'blech' face, sticking his tongue out, thoroughly disgusted by the image. If they were anything like Violet, then maybe he didn't want to know.

Still.

“What color are they? How big are the fish in our lake?”

Perhaps he was asking too many questions. He slowed, then, and settled down on his rump. Harper smiled fondly at the boy, and he looked confused for a moment before she started cooing over him, and he realized how uncomfortable it felt.

Aunt Harper was so nice, just like Mama - but maybe she was trying to make up for everybody else. He sighed.

“If I was perfect, everyone would want to play with me.”

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Flashes, flashes.

Screams, screams.

Then he woke. 

Eyes strained against the dimness, only briefly as a wine escaped him. He... wasn't the right way up, flailing ivory-tipped paws in  the air. There was a cool breeze that blew in, yet Harper's warmth was at his side. He rolled onto his fluffy little stomach, nosing into the warm fur. He couldn't see much, but knew others were beside him. Probably his siblings. With a content sigh, he snuggled back to the dreams. Little did he know what that meant.
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All the talking, it was creating a look of annoyance for the young Rigby. Eyes closed while he lifted his little head to let a broken pup howl in protest of the activity. After that, he would whine as he tried to life his body with his front legs, the effort intense and strenuous. Every day he was getting bigger and stronger though. Rigby would half-crawl and half-drag himself deeper into his mother's fur as if he could escape all the noise. In fact he was so sure he could achieve such an action that he would try and wiggle himself underneath her, too stupid at the moment to understand or care about getting crushed.

Being able to squish underneath a few folds of skin, he would let out a satisfied sigh, feeling secured and enjoying the pulse of his mother. He would start to drift back to sleep, listening to his mother and cousin's voices.
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^^Was this the Rugrats? It seemed that when one of her children woke up, the others followed suit. Orel whined and wiggled his paws in the air like he just didn’t care? and Harper chuckled as she watched him struggle.

“That’s right, Orel, reach for the stars.”

She bent down to lick at his chin, but he ended up rolling over and catching her tongue to the face instead. Welp. Things were off to a wonderful start.

And then Rigby was on the move, nosing his way into and under her, causing her to lift up a little bit, before she turned and grabbed him, placing him next to Fiora, so he could dig into her chest, instead.

She smiled up at Alder. She hadn’t forgotten him. He wanted her to show him how to fish, or at least, show him a fishie? “I would love to show you a fishie, Alder. Consider it a date. Maybe it can be a learning lesson for all?” She cooed, glancing back to her own children.

“Fishies can be all sorts of colors and sizes. I don’t know how many or how big the ones in our lake are, but it will be fun to find out.”

When he spoke next, Harper could feel the sharpness of his words. “Perhaps they don’t know how to play with you, dear. Did you know that everyone has their own different love language? Playing styles are just like that. For instance, I was really rough on your mother all the time; I used to sit on her and she never really liked that. I had to learn to be more gentle with her if I wanted her to continue to play with me.”

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Movement attracted Alder's attention, and he saw an auburn pup flash into view, legs paddling through the air as if he were swimming. He seemed oddly distressed upon waking, but settled comfortably back into his mother with a happy little sigh after a short time.

Rigby, however, was not so lenient.

The little brown child cried out in frustration, and before Alder could open his mouth to say 'hello', the boy had quickly wriggled in underneath Harper's fur in a very pointed move to shut out their conversation.

Alder visibly deflated. Well, maybe next time.

“I would like that a lot, Aunt Harper,” he chimed in response, wagging his crimson tail with anticipation. Maybe he would even like swimming - Mother — Amaranth refused to go anywhere near the water, but maybe with enough lessons he could convince her how fun it was!*

He listened curiously to his aunt's retelling of childhood days spent pestering Valeska. It was difficult to imagine a time when Mama was anything but extremely physical and hard on his littermates, but he supposed being a kid yourself was different - maybe she had learned it all from Harper in the first place.

“I bet she lost a lot to you!” he said without even thinking, the thought alone making him giggle. “Mama hates losing, but she pretends it's fine so we don't feel bad.”

Valeska was highly competitive when it came to tests of skill and knowledge alike.

“Uh, I think your babies want me to go... they seem tired. So we can go look at fish soon? I won't forget!”

The red child sprang to his paws, moving toward the mouth of the den - but then quickly turned and gave his Aunt Harper an affectionate lick on the cheek.

“I can't wait!”

 

{Exit Alder}

*OOC: Needless to say, he didn't know fucking shit about her past and why this was a horrible idea.

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