ORIGIN

Fireheart--tired, and wincing and limping from his burns--was surprised at the utter selflessness of the black pup. He was pushing the rat toward him, though he himself had caught it.

He hesitated, unwilling to eat the whole thing by himself. It was large, but he wasn't sure it'd feed them all, and the way Kazgut was shifting over to Vyette, pressing to her, seemed distinctly unhappy. It had been a bloody, squealing kill, not a clean one, and Fireheart could tell that it hadn't been easy.

The blood taunted his nostrils, sparking the roiling growl of hunger in his belly, but still he wavered. His firelit eyes lingered on the pair. I'll share it, he decided--though in simpler words--if I can't catch another, first.

He concentrated on that feeling of burning, and tried to gather all that heat up--and, shoving his head beneath the rat-stone, he opened his little jaws. He heard a squeal, felt a skittering--he'd wanted to stun a rat, but instead this one was stumbling toward him. But his magic had worked--searing, shimmering air had blown forth--and a moment of scuffling, struggling, biting and (further) squealing later, he had a much smaller, second rat for his efforts.

He also had bleeding bite- and scratch-marks over his nose and muzzle, and he winced as he carried this one over, and set it beside the first.

"Share," he offered softly, past the pain of the rat-bites and the burns, and began to pull apart the larger rat that Kazgut had presented. Past the splash of blood and meat, his tiny teeth clipped away perhaps half of it, leaving the rest--and the smaller rat--for the other two to share.

"Family," Fireheart agreed, and looked up to offer a flicking-back of ears, a thumping of tail, at Vyette as she checked his burns, his cuts. They hurt, but some half-hidden instinct told him that was normal; that they had come off well.

As he wolfed (ha) down his meal, he lifted his gaze to watch the other two. Kazgut--also eating; and Vyette, sniffing him over. It struck him then, a stray thought, that Kazgut had been roiling with shadows; that he himself had called on heat and smoldering paws. But Vyette-? She had been, for the most part, a passive member of the hunt. She'd tried, but she had not called on magic, and he found himself wondering if her touch alone was mending his wounds. Perhaps that was her power? He peered up at her, licking the blood from his little muzzle, and asked as much. "I have--hot magic? I think. He has-" and here, he nodded toward Kazgut--"Dark. Shadows. What is yours?"

Curiosity shone in his eyes as he peered at her. He wondered, too, why she wasn't eating. Kazgut and he were like two sides to a coin, in some ways--both fighting, hunting, both using their magic, though one black and one pale, one cold shadows and one heat. So where did Vyette fit in-? She held an elegance and grace, even so young, that neither of them bore.

What, exactly, was she?

The white wolf hesitated.

"I will rest. My nose hurts," he said at last. He examined them briefly--his new brethren. They had food, and they were safe enough, though the rats had scratched. Now, tired by his running about and his use of magic, the wolf pup felt abruptly, completely drowsy.

He toddled off into the shadow of a rock and lowered his head on thick paws, flameglow eyes drifting shut. In moments, he was fast asleep.