Looking Back: Twitchtip's Life

Here is a story of mine I've been meaning to release for a while. It's a story of Twitchtip's life in her POV. Hope you like!

Disclaimer: If you haven't guessed yet, TUC id not mine. And tossing an endless number of pennies into fountains is not going to transfer it to my possession. Thank you.

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I never really knew how my life turned out the way it did, but looking back, I realize that I have been through a lot more than your usual gnawer.

My mother and father were well known gnawers, and were treated with respect. My mother, Preenpaw, was the most beautiful gnawer I've ever seen, with a lovely rusty red coat and black eyes with flecks of gold in them. I always adored her.

My father, Ripper, was never around much. He was a general in King Gorger's army, and only stopped in with the occasional crawler carcass for my mother. I barely even knew him. He didn't care much for my siblings and I, he had eyes for my mother. Their relationship was strong, but it had the occasional fight. It wasn't as bad as a couple in the next cave, who fought daily, sometimes injuring each other worse than I could ever imagine.

There was nothing that comforted me more than the sound of my mother's voice, calmly soothing my siblings and I to sleep, or else calling to us after hunting and finding some fish. I loved to curl close to her and hear her tell us stories, sometimes about the Garden of Hesperides which I desperately wanted to visit some day, or about her days as a pup, exploring our home, the Labyrinth. I loved them all.

I was close to my two sisters and brother, but I still demanded personal space. I couldn't stand not having a little time alone. I also got very jealous when my mother gave them more attention than she gave to me, and I butted in. They never really minded much, though.
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"Swiftstep! Striker! Silvertoes! Twitchtip! I have some food!" that was my mother, coming into the cave. At once my siblings and I went ballistic. It had been harder now to find food, since the humans I have learned to hate took away two of our most important fishing grounds. Even though I was only a month old, I still completely understood the concept of human-hating. As my father said, 'the humans are our enemies, everything they do is against our favor, and they make living a peaceful life seemingly impossible!'. That was one of the only things he said to us when he came to call. My mother always tried to keep an open mind about things, but I could tell she didn't like the humans much either, by the way her lips twitched every time they were mentioned.

"I smell it, I smell it!" I said, spinning in a circle. I didn't know why, but I always smelled the food first, sometimes even when she was still deep in the Labyrinth, far from our cave. I could even smell what she brought, too.

"It's fish! There's ten of them, two for each of us!" I said excitedly.

Swiftstep, one of my sisters, looked at me strangely. "How do you always know that?" she asked.

"I don't know." I said.

In a moment, we heard her swift footsteps coming towards our cave. Then she appeared in the entrance, with, sure enough, five fish in her mouth and five on her back. We all jumped onto her, and, pulling two fish from her for each of us, ate like maniacs.

My mother ate slowly, watching and smiling at us eating like we had never tasted food before. It was always that way. My mother put us before herself, and that was why I loved her so much.
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We were just settling down to sleep. I was curled in the nape of my mother's neck, closest to her head, the way I liked it. My siblings were all around me, already asleep. I, however, wasn't.

"Tell me another story." I said.

"What shall it be this time?"' she asked. She never refused to tell me one, no matter how late it was.

"About the garden of Hesperides. Please." I said.

And my mother began one of her famous stories, this one about eating her first golden apple from the trees. She described the juiciness of it all, the burst of flavor when she bit into it, and the satisfaction she had when she swallowed it. She said that she had been allowed to have as many as she wanted, since there were so many of them. I could almost smell the savory goodness of it, and the urge to go to the Garden and taste one became even stronger. I was tempted to make my mother take me there now, but I knew it was out of the question, not when we were just settling down to sleep.

When she had finished, I nestled my head in her warm neck. "Thank you." I said. She nuzzled me.

"You are welcome, but now it is time to sleep. Rest well, Twitchtip." she cooed, resting her head on the ground. I did the same, and, sniffing her sweet smelling fur, drifted off to sleep.