The boy slept soundlessly, drifting aimlessly through the sporadic flashing of images he greedily consumed. First, it had been the sunlight blinding his dreams with an orange shadow across the grove he knew. Next, it had been a murder of crows squawking their defiant words toward his ears as they bent and soared through the tree branches above. And then came the raindrops of a springtime shower, dropping endlessly atop his head as his ears twitched in their own reluctant response.

It was his mother’s touch, a tongue ran quietly atop his head, that had turned his dreams from their sun-kissed sky toward a downpour of rain as he shifted once in his sleep. A paw jutted out, twitching, as a gruntled moan fled his lips.

His mother moved toward his sibling, and the unnamed boy awoke.

He fluttered blurry, sleep-touched eyes as his head groggily rose from where it had sat nestled in the tangle of limbs that were his own and his family. He yawned wide as a stretch of his limbs ran all the way down to the splaying of his toes as his head turned toward his mother and blinked.

She seemed…

Lighter today.

And for a moment, a shadow of what could’ve been considered a smile seemed to have graced his lips.

Although it was short-lived, as most things were, his attention turned toward his brother.

He watched, blinking, as his brother looked up at their mother, and the boy could not explain what had taken hold of him, but suddenly he reached for his brother’s ear.

It was a quiet, soundless motion and fortunately one made without the purchase of teeth—but he gummed his brother’s ear with a hungry slobber as he growled playfully.