Despite only a short time having passed since she and her siblings were brought into the world they had changed dramatically. Her ears had opened exposing her to the world of sound, her mother’s gruff voice and her father’s intricate tones were like a home all their own to her. Her eyes had opened revealing striking pools split straight down the middle, half gold and half amethyst that could not take in enough of the huge world around her. She had found her legs more capable of carrying her slight, if not pudgy, form around the feather-strewn floor of their den home. Days she spent staring out the opening of the under-tree den, seeing the sun filtering through what she knew were trees, towering sentinels she imagined here to protect them all and how she wanted to go look at them all close up! What an imagination she had, undoubtedly inherited from her father, that made her long to go explore the big ‘outside’.

One night she was restless, tossing and turning atop her fluffy bed composed of her siblings engulfed in their parents bodies. She could not settle down, the moon shining brightly on the forest floor and she had an idea. Silently she extricated herself from the bodies of her sleeping family, stepping over Vortigerns red tail and dancing between the black and white painted bodies of Asariel and Tzadkiel. She was almost out the door when she heard movement, crouching down and believing herself caught and in trouble for her late night escapades she turned to see her father’s head slightly raised, a slight smile on his face and a twinkle in his golden eyes. She smiled back at him, her small tail wagging and in turn making her whole body shake with happiness at his attention. She loved her parents very much, but there was such a similarity between Zaphkiel and herself that she couldn’t help but be entranced by him and the intricate stories he so often told them all.

She waddled over to him, glad he hadn’t told her not to go and with his own adventurous spirit knew he wouldn’t. Placing her two tiny white paws on his leg she reached, her pink tongue giving a lick at the side of his muzzle. In turn he kissed her atop her star-crowned head and with that she was off, short legs carrying her out the door and into the open air. Finally she felt like she could breathe as the moon washed over her. Looking up she yipped quietly at the moon-eye in a fond hello, eyes searching the heavens for the familiar constellations that were as close as friends to her heart. She walked only a short distance from the den, following a familiar trail that was well traveled and therefore easy for her small body to navigate until she found a clearing where she could better see the sprawling sky above her.

Happily she sighed, sitting beneath the blanket of stars above. She always felt at home when she looked at those twinkling lights high above, and perhaps one day she would find out why, but it was almost as if they could speak to her. The ambient glow of the moon seemed to highlight the dusting of star-like marks scatters over her head and trailing down her back, even the white marks that ran from both her eyes seemed illuminated giving her quite the ethereal presence this night. “Hello Orion. Good evening Draco, Leo. Canis how are you tonight? I hope your child is doing well.” Her small voice blossoms in the quiet, tree circled area as she greets her friends with the names she had learned so quickly from her father.