II: Her Origins
She was born in an earth located approximately six kilometers south of the game preserve. An invisible yet comforting entity carefully nuzzled her, reassuring her security. It spoke in a soft and understanding voice, which mingled with the fading echoes of infantile whimpering.
Welcome, little one. This is your first day. Your destination will be the nursery compartment at the back end of the main corridor in our den, to the left. We expect great things from you.
She was one of a litter of five kits, with two brothers and two sisters. She can still vividly remember the earliest days of her infancy, cuddled up closely in an indiscernible bundle of dark brown fur balls with tiny snouts. At first, she was a helplessly blind whelp, completely dependent upon the nourishment provided by a warm lactic dispenser, an unseen benefactor she did not question. Along with her mewling siblings, she wholly embraced the thermally insulated body whose ruffled fur was somewhat abrasive, albeit comforting. She knew not what to make of her circumstances, but instinct told her to simply whimper and cuddle during the fluctuating periods of consciousness within her infancy, completely reliant on the loving and omnipotent force in her service.
Gradually, her vision developed, and everything began to slowly materialize around her. The quiet comfort and safety of Mother's warm snow-white ruff amidst the darkness, save a mysterious window of light gleaming at the edge of the world, was the only life she had known for her first few weeks. The milky-screened, sparkly light-blue eyes she viewed the small underground world through only helped to strengthen the fastidious care and attention she received, for it made her appear that much more adorable and precious in the eyes of Mother.
Every once in a while, that continuous stream of radiance was interrupted, and a glaring silhouette of another figure similar to mother's size had stopped by the entrance of the den, only for an instant, to leave behind a generous ration of its latest kill. It heeded well in leaving almost instantaneously, for any protracted visit to the den would incur the ill-tempered wrath of Mother, whose current unpredictable, reactive behavior was a serious force of nature. Deep within her was the gut instinct that no living thing, except her own self, must ever get near those defenseless whelps; and that she must never leave the den for any reason, with the sole exception of her biological necessities. Only then would Mother leave her kits for the briefest moment: just to slake her thirst at a nearby rill, then swiftly retrieve the indispensable package and devour its contents.
Eventually, Mother stopped nursing her cubs. To provide for them, she simply dragged in the kill and ripped the meat apart, allowing the vixen kit and her siblings contend for the resulting scraps in a first-come first-serve basis. Through this friendly competition amongst her siblings, a familial hierarchy had already been established. Fortunately, she was the most assertive of her sisters in each scuffle and, in many cases, closely rivaled the most vigorous of her brothers.
Unbeknownst to the wooly kit, the survival of Mother, as well as that of her brothers and sisters, depended on those handouts. It wasn't until she was nearly four weeks old did she discover the supplier of these essentials. One of her brothers, the largest of her siblings, decided it was time to leave and mustered the courage to enter the luminous portal, exiting the earth. It wasn't long until she, along with the rest of the siblings, followed suit. As she entered the blinding light she was confounded by the intensity of the outside world.
Coincidentally, there stood a magnificent dog fox sitting patiently near the entrance, his beautiful white-tipped tail elegantly curled around the front of his darkened forelegs. A partially eaten rabbit hung limply in his mouth; the vixen cub's favorite meal. It was Father. He was waiting for his mate to approve of his feeding before releasing the burden.
Eagerly, the young vixen and all her siblings romped about him, waiting for the opportunity at first dibs. The smell of fresh meat was intoxicating. Mother appeared shortly at the entrance; her overprotective vigilance quickly allayed by the endearing sight of her scrupulous mate. With a maternally stern yet thankful bark, she authorized the feeding frenzy. In an instant, the cubs jaw-gripped and dismembered the body, violently tugging and pulling each limb apart like a pack of ravenous wolves, each brother and sister wrestling for his or her morsel of the prey.
Afterwards, she spent the next quarter hour in gleeful frolic. Scuffling with her siblings, she engaged in a number of spirited games that included, but were not limited to, whimsically fighting over possession of inedible remains of past meals, such as ruffled feathers and desiccated bones; unbounded scuffling with her siblings in a jubilant manner; chasing Mother's tail; and frivolously gamboling about the forest within close proximity to the den, investigating each and every peculiarity within the nearby brushes and tall grasses. While these activities mainly consisted of jubilant play, they actually served as vital precursors to the invaluable hunting skills the she and her siblings would need to develop in order to survive.
Father stood firmly atop the hill, an obstinate sentinel on the lookout for any potential dangers during this vulnerable situation. Mother walked over to him and commended his efforts with an affectionate nuzzle. Together, they proudly overlooked their energetic cubs, the result of their combined parental efforts.
Days grew into weeks, and weeks compounded into months, as the idyllic doorway scene repeated itself many times throughout the late spring and early summer. The cubs were becoming increasingly boisterous and energetic, and with that vim came the extra responsibility for Mother in supervising their gamboling and frivolous excursions outside of the den. Regulating their activities was becoming an increasingly demanding chore, requiring her unremitting attention to the frolicsome youngsters, who were still extremely vulnerable to the dangers that lurked just beyond the gradually sloped hillside that veiled the den's entrance. Multiple times throughout the day, she would have to herd some worrisome cub that meandered too far from the den's entrance, sometimes forcibly transporting it by the scruff of the neck. As the frequency of these habitual wanderings elevated, it became increasingly obvious that she was engaged in a losing battle.
In addition to her cumbersome parental duties, Mother was relentlessly hassled, for the cubs would harvest every particle of enjoyment out of anything they could accomplish with their blissful youth and jubilance. They would frivolously pounce upon her soft, snowy-white fur, a feat that was more amicable than practical in training their hunting skills. After realizing how ineffective their haphazard assaults were against the impervious mass of their prey, a few of the scruffy, juvenile participants cleverly devised a plan. They began to time their vaults more synchronously, progressively decreasing the interval of respite between each furry bombardment. Eventually, with the combined momentum of their hurdled bodies, three of the collaborators managed to tackle her!
The wanton cubs delighted themselves in this brief moment of victory: their successful hold of Mother was very short-lived. With a sudden flail she extricated herself and, to their severe disappointment, sent the three captors flying in their respective directions.
During her tumultuous liberation, as she was treading away to sprawl her enervated body away from the commotion, Mother was suddenly surprised to realize that her tail had been caught! Such a feat was remarkable in the light that none of her cubs had been able to accomplish this yet within the fox family. She turned her head to eye the culprit: the sprightliest of her daughters, the young vixen whose flocculent garb was now molting into an auspicious, bright red-orange hue. As it turned out, she opportunistically latched onto Mother's tail when she turned around and relaxed her guard.
Of all her cubs, this daughter was Mother's favorite. She was gifted with a precocious level of intelligence and guile that had the promising foundation of a skilled hunter. Although not the strongest amongst the litter, she was keen and resolute especially when it came to pouncing. For these reasons, Mother gave her a quick yet subtle glance of approval, which the young vixen acknowledged and accepted gingerly, then jolted foreword and expelled her distinctive daughter. By now Mother was thoroughly exhausted, and was anxiously awaiting her mate's arrival.
When Father arrived, the cubs were still rambunctious enough to bite and nip at his ruffled fur, elated by his presence. They felt secure in his nearness, willing to roam further into the outskirts of the den in order to intercept his arrival with lolling tongues and infantile barking. They scurried beneath his ebon legs and cavorted about him, desperately competing for attention. He was initially second in command when it came to raising the youngsters, evident by the fact that he was viciously forbidden from entering the den while they were blind sucklings. However, as a result of his faithful devotion to the family as a staple benefactor of food and tireless sentinel, in conjunction with Mother's increased confidence in her cubs' ability to survive outside the den, Father was promoted to an equal standing in family affairs.
The sprawling puppies, having had more than enough of Mother, rose up and smothered Father like a swarm of fleas transiting from one host to another. It was a puppy-like frolic of welcome, one that even invoked a hidden, yet poignant sense of jealousy within Mother. To him, however, this was insufferable torture; for Father could bear far less abuse from the cubs than his mate, whose attachment to them was much more instinctive.
Why, naturally, had he been any ordinary dog fox, he would have no qualms in shirking this superfluous responsibility by vacating the den's precincts in order to recuperate in the privacy of his own abode, situated on a rocky hilltop no more than one hundred meters northwest of the den. However, his dedication to the family outweighed his discomfiture with the cubs, so he yielded a few golden minutes of paternal love for playtime and fondling. Of all the games he played with them, tag was by far his most favorite, for its primary objective was to minimize the physical contact he receive from those insufferable little youngsters.
They had been irrepressibly waiting for this moment, having barely been able to bear protracted lengths of his absence from the den. Fortunately for them, his absences indicated he was an industrious father who would hunt frequently and take on taxing travails in order to provide for his family.
The strongest and most observant brother of the pack, the ablest sibling who seemed to be gifted with superior traits, was the first to notice something different about this particular episode: Father carried no meal this time, however, the fresh scent of a feathery partridge still lingered from his whiskered muzzle.
At first, the perceptive cub was both baffled and disappointed by this aberration. Did his father fail the family this time? Has he disgracefully returned to the den seeking forgiveness after an unsuccessful hunt? Or, perhaps he may have caught a small partridge, but, having succumbed to his hunger and been thoroughly jaded by his familial responsibilities, decided to devour the entire lot and leave not a morsel for the family!
Soon all five of the cubs were perplexed and unsettled by the same quandary; the younger brother and the sprightly young vixen sat down with an attentive but perturbed posture, while their two younger sisters were fretting uncontrollably. The daughters paced around in circles and squealed nervously, impatiently awaiting some outcome.
Fortunately, their misgivings were dispelled by a reassuring look from their father, followed by his mellow bemusement. Father nonchalantly ambled over to his mate and softly communed with her, as if to inform her of something or request some kind of approval.
Together, the parents approached and nipped at their cubs, as if to get them to do something. Of course, the sharpest brother was the first to take the hint correctly and, with keen observation, noticed a bundle of partridge giblets deliberately littered on the sod fifty feet away from him, just over the steep knoll that shielded the den's entrance.
He bounded over to this ration and gobbled it in a matter of seconds, knowing that competition would soon arise: weak traces of his Father's scent trails hinted him towards other morsels. As it turned out, Father did indeed bring back a sufficient meal for his progeny, however, he didn't intend to distribute it through handouts anymore. The cubs were maturing rapidly and, being fed adult-size meals, needed to be taught adult-like models of obtaining these meals. The other eager cub siblings ascertained this conditional method of feeding and aptly followed suite in scrambling through the meadows, much like human children engaged in an Easter-egg hunt.
The wiliest of the cubs learned to follow the footsteps of Father in order to discover the hidden tidbits, a method that proved to be far more effective than blindly scouring the surface world at full speed, peering into every perceivable nook and cranny. Competition amongst the siblings now became a prominent aspect within their lives. Simply put, the objective of the game was to seek or go hungry.
In the natural world, whenever a controlled environment of equal opportunity and differential capability is presented amongst competitors, there is almost never an equal distribution of resources. The strongest and brightest fellow of the bunch, whose greater abilities could best find him the cached food positioned by his parents, received the greatest and choicest morsels. It was he who had been the first at investigating the luminescent outside world. It was he who first discovered, during frolicsome playtime within the grass stems and flowerbeds, that catching beetles and crickets and butterflies could provide a delightful supplementation to their daily meals provided by Father. It was by no surprise then that, every time, this adroit prodigy received the gold medal, while his younger brother and sprightly sister closely contended for the silver and bronze.
In addition, because his ability to find the food faster than his siblings yielded him a disproportionately greater amount of nourishment, his growth was accelerated faster than the others. This only served to further steepen the inequality of capability between the siblings.
By the time his parents started to bring live prey for the cubs to practice their craft on, he was by far the keenest in capturing the mice and shrews that were deployed within the burrow. Father was very proud of him, as most of the parental anticipation about his progeny he indulged in was directed towards this son. His wooly coat had molted into a conspicuous dark red hue, an unequivocal indicator of his prodigious strength and vitality.
Despite the serious competition that ensued between one another during these drills, the siblings still maintained a relatively harmonious and contented family relationship. In fact, the red-orange sister more often regarded her more precocious brother as a role model rather than a detestable competitor. He seemed the least addled and scatter-brained when reacting to a call of distress, caution, or vigilance from either parent, and was always intent on finding out what was expected of him first. Even during frivolous playtime outside of the feeding, she paid close attention to his observant behavior, his astute reflexes, and his notable watchfulness. With that, she aptly profited from the liberty of having three teachers amongst her veteran parents and astute brother. Aside from that, however, the young vixen still managed to get an immense amount of fun with her family within the warm summer world.