She very gently moved the chrysalises to the side wall of the den and then began scooping the old bedding up with her paws. Once she had a nice pile, she gathered as much as she could in her mouth and then went outside and deposited it a good distance from the den. She did this multiple times until the baby room was clear of the old bedding and there was just cool damp soil under her paws. She stopped for a bit to get a drink of water from the river. Having all that old grass and moss in her mouth left it dry and tasting funny.

Wouldn’t Destiny be so pleased? After a few minutes break, she got back to her paws and made her way to the nearest tall grasses and began to dig it out by the root with her paws. She was no dog, and this kind of digging wasn’t exactly natural for her, but that was fine. She’d done quite a lot of digging when she’d moved in, making the den entrance big enough for her large body and digging out another section of Destiny sleeping area so that they could both fit. It was good exercise, and it got the leopard’s heart rate up. The endorphins were kicking in!

With a spring in her step, the leopard returned to the den with a mouthful of fresh bedding to put down in the kids’ room. If she was really gonna make it bigger, she probably have to replace it again soon because the room would fill with dirt clods from the digging, but that was all right. She put the fresh bedding down, starting at one corner, and intended to methodically place down more and more until the room was nice and padded for the babes. This would take her a good hour or so since her mouth could only carry so much grass.

Since she had wanted to try and get a better Night Eye cast, she on her way back outside and attempted to call on her Magicka. What happened next surprised the hell out of her. Instead of her vision becoming clearer and brighter, it darkened completely. She was struck blind where she stood. She cried out in surprise and blinked hard, opening her eyes again, but still, she couldn’t see a thing. She growled in frustration, the hair on her body standing up so that she looked like a giant orange puffball. Please tell me this isn’t permanent, she thought to herself. She took many calming deep breaths, and slowly her vision returned. She stood there for quite a while, calming herself, and with a last shaky breath, she exited the den.

Fira was never one to be heavily affected by these kinds of things. Failures didn’t scare her much, they were just opportunities to learn. The lesson in that failure was that she should never, ever rely completely on her Magic. It seemed to work or fail randomly, which made her question why she needed to practice in the first place. But… something had changed recently and she seemed to be better at casting than she had been previously — not that she used her Magic all that regularly anyways. But that wasn’t the point. She did feel stronger than she had before, and that’s what made her keep practicing.

She took another mouthful of grass and headed back to the den, determined to try that spell again. At least now she knew what happened when it failed so horribly. A minute-ish of blindness was worth trying again until she got it right.

She set the next bit of bedding down next to the first lump and spread it out a bit with her paw. Honestly there had to be a better way to do this. Maybe she should just… drag it back into the den with her front paws? Ugh, but then loose pieces of grass would be scattered all the way from the pick-up site to the entrance of the den. No, she’d probably have to keep doing it the way she was doing it. Maybe… maybe she should see if she could find a pouch of some kind, like that coyote Macawi had? But she’d never seen anything like that before… Hmm…

Well, at any rate, she tried to do the spell again, and it worked without blinding her this time, but it was still so weak! Ugh! Now she was determined to get it right even if it took her the next hour and exhausted her Magicka reserves. With a huff, she sat down in the den and prepared herself for some serious casting. The rest of the bedding could wait.

Well, it seemed her determination finally paid off in the end. Not long after she sat down all in a huff, her Night Vision actually worked properly. Light flooded her vision and she could very clearly see all around the den, from the bright green of the bedding grasses to the shiny black background and rainbow sparkles of the chrysalises against the far wall. “Finally,” she said muttered to herself quietly. Now she could get to work putting the rest of the bedding in place in peace. She had one more spell to practice, but that required a target. Maybe she’d go fishing again once all this bedding was back in place.

She also decided then not to do any renovations on the den until she spoke to Destiny about it. She need to talk it over with her and get her best friend’s approval for the changes. Okay, after the bedding was done and she did a bit more fishing, she’d go talk to Destiny.

It took a good long while to replace all the bedding in the kids’ room, and by the end of it, Fira was quite exhausted. When she finally got all of it settled, she was so tired she lay down next to the unborn babes and took a nap for a long time. She didn’t dream, and her sleep was not restless. She was deep in slumberland for a good hour or two, and when she awoke, she felt very refreshed. The smell of fresh moss and grass filled her nose, and she felt like she had accomplished a lot today.

With a smile, she rose to her paws and headed out to the river to do one last bit of fishing.

Fira was so excited to practice her venom spell on a fish that she forgot to charge the spell first before trying to catch one of the wriggling beasts. She saw the silver body flash in front of her eyes and lunged her head into the water immediately. It darted away quickly, and she sat back up, only then realizing that she hadn’t cast the Venom spell yet. She chuckled to herself. “A little over-excited, there?” she asked herself. “Next time remember what you’re doing.” Her tail twitched as she watched the water some more, waiting for the next opportunity to grab at one of the slippery devils. In the meantime she attempted to cast her venom spell.

Ah, good! The venom began to flow without hesitation. She didn’t think she could deal with another bout of spell cast issues. It was an odd feeling in her mouth, the flow of the venom. It didn’t harm her — at least, it hadn’t yet — but it felt like there was a huge overproduction of saliva in her mouth now. She tried to avoid swallowing the stuff as best she could, hoping she could catch a fish easily now. If she failed to catch one in the next few seconds, the venom production would stop before she could use it on anything. She peeled her eyes for the next victim.

Once again, Fira was left fish-less. The silverlings were catching on to what she was doing, and they were darting quickly past where she was, making it very difficult to catch them. She came up out of the water empty-handed — or empty-mouthed, really — and sighed. Opening her mouth underwater had let all the venom escape and now she would have to try the spell again to produce more. No matter. She was quite pleased with her productivity today. She’d done nothing but run off and hunt for so long that it felt good to clean out the den and practice her Magic. She’d give herself a bit of a rest before trying again though.

While she rested, Fira thought about how she would approach Destiny about maybe expanding the den. They were gonna have two rambunctious little kids running around, so they needed to make at least one more room to give them all enough space, preferably a lot more than one room. And Fira would have to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t go too close to the Golems when they were exploring. She personally had never had a run-in with a Golem, but just observing them from afar, she could see how potentially dangerous they could be. Fira didn’t want to stop her kids from seeing the world, but during their first few cycles, she didn’t know if they’d be strong or smart enough to deal with giant rock monsters on their own.