Quail

"Mom... Mom isn't doing very well..."

You see this wolf curled up with Snakeroot, Asuwi, and Chesapeake. His ears droop and he traces nervous scratches in the earth in front of him. Chesapeake leans over and silently offers him a lick on the snout, while the two other males get up and move closer, nuzzling up to his sides.

Quail was born to Pheasant, the first lead huntress of the Shenandoah pack, as part of her second litter. When Quail and his five littermates were born, his mother was already beginning her sixth year. So, as he grew up, Quail saw his mother slipping into the latter stage of her life. Far from being ashamed, Quail was inspired by his mother's resilience and persistence even at her advanced age. She always seemed so full of life, even while maintaining her easygoing, laid-back personality. Quail resolved to be just like his mother, and set his eyes on the role of lead hunter. At the very least, he wanted to become a skilled prey stalker just like Pheasant.

When Quail was in his adolescence, his mother began to act somewhat peculiar... Happier than usual. When he asked her what had changed, she gleefully told him that she had begun to fall in love with Pumpkin, one of the most prominent pupsitters in the pack. Quail was ecstatic, as he had always seen Pumpkin as a sort of father figure since he was a little pup, listening to the orange wolf's rambling stories. His mother and Pumpkin wished for their romance to be a quiet one, and so Quail was asked to keep their secret. He obliged, happily carrying the knowledge in his heart as he continued his training. 

However, the secret was short-lived. Pheasant began to feel under the weather not long after she and Pumpkin became serious about their courtship. It turned out that she had swiftly become pregnant with a new litter of pups, even though she was two months shy of her seventh year. No one in the family had thought that this would have been possible, given her age. Quail, unlike his parents, was alarmed from the start. For the first time, he found himself worrying for his mother, rather than placing her on a pedestal. He had a terrible feeling about the pregnancy from the start.

As it turned out,  Quail was right to worry. His mother's labor went very poorly, and she and the litter very nearly died. Two of the four pups made it, and they became Pumpkin and Pheasant's entire world. In their grief, they also adopted a small orphaned pup named Winterberry that was found the day after the birth. Quail was excited for his new little brothers and sister, but he was not blind to how weak the ordeal had left his mother. Falcon and Albatross, the herbalists, visited Pheasant and the pups frequently, and often left the den with their heads lowered and ears flattened. Quail couldn't get a straight answer out of his mother for once; she insisted weakly that everything was going to be all right, and that her strength would return after she stopped nursing. Quail wasn't at all convinced...