snowdrop blossoms

She'd always known she wouldn't be her mother's heir. She would not be a link in the venerated chain of leaders and mothers. Child of her mother's youth, child of love but not wisdom, that she was, she knew her mother would have other children, later, when the canny old bitch had had a chance to hone herself and her bloodline to the greatest perfection that could be achieved in a lifetime. Their land was rich and full of life, but that didn't make it any less hard or unforgiving. It required a certain striving for strength, a bettering of each generation, and that meant that the getting of pups and heirs was a matter for strong blood. The love was saved for raising them.

Snowdrop blossoms accepted this without shame or regret. Strong her blood wasn't, but the love that raised her had been. Even if she would never inherit her mother's pack, she had been born to the days of its founding, the first litter raised in the redwood den, and she'd grown up regarded with hope, with delight. Her and her sister had been the future's promise, stumbling in on clumsy paws. Her sister was long gone, now, given to another pack in an exchange of daughters. What had become of her, no one knew; she'd left her new pack eventually, and she'd been gone so long that even her name was forgotten. The foster-sister for which she'd been exchanged was kind and mild and of even weaker blood than snowdrop blossoms herself. She kept her place in the pack by the sentiment of her birth alone. The two of them had a legacy, but strength was not it.

So she'd known that while she had nothing of the strength of her mother's later children, no inheritance of her mother's throne, she was not nothing to the pack. Her mother -- wise and canny as she was now -- loved snowdrop's father with the helplessness of a yearling, and someday soon snowdrop blossoms would have full-siblings young enough to be her own pups who would inherit more than she ever would. That would be tribute enough to the worth of snowdrop's blood.

But there was one trick. One key. "Soon" did not mean "soon enough."

Snowdrop blossom's mother was old. Snowdrop herself wasn't much younger, but her mother's muzzle was growing grey and her joints stiff. She still had years in her, still had time for a last litter or two if she timed things right, but her last litter of pups would (in all likelihood) reach adulthood only after their mother was dead on the ground. Those pups wouldn't be ready to inherit. Could a pack thrive on even the strongest blood if the blood's carrier was young and unready? 

So there would need to be an... interim. Someone to carry the pack for a short time only, bearing no young, only there to keep the trail open for her mother's true heir.

Snowdrop blossoms would have no children. There was no room for weak blood in her mother's pack, and she'd respect that, even after her mother's death.

But maybe she could still leave a legacy. Maybe, she could still have a way to stand among the mothers, her kin and her birthright, and be remembered.