"....."
This young wolf is settled on his side beneath the low-hanging boughs of an ancient spruce tree. His ears lay flat on his head, and he stares out, watching the smaller pups playing with all the carefree zeal that one might expect. Comparing the small pups to Cuckoo, you come to the conclusion that this is a deeply unhappy young male.
Cuckoo is the only surviving pup of Oriole, the oldest pupsitter in the Shenandoah Pack. From the moment he opened his eyes, his mother has been incredibly attentive to Cuckoo's corporeal needs. However, Oriole is not one known for sharing her emotions, and this extends to her interactions with her pup. He learned too early that a litter had come before him, and that all of those golden-pelted pups had died. His littermates were all stillborn too, and Oriole always seemed to assume that Cuckoo was a step away from death himself. She told him as much, but being so young, he never made the connection between his mother's emotional distance and her extensive experience with loss.
He was naturally shy and awkward as a pup, and there weren't many other wolves his age in the pack. It also didn't help that amongst the few other pups of his day, most believed the rumor about his mother being cursed after the death of one of her charges early on in the pack's history. Jumping to his mother's defense only served to further isolate him. Cuckoo learned to spend time by himself, with young Watseka and the peculiar wolf Rain being his only occasional companions.
Art by #32569
Pupsitter 
Pupsitter