Chapter 83
Waking up, Natalie was surprised to be confronted with the sight of dawn breaking over the eastern horizon. Most times these days, she slept inside a tent. She was not used to seeing such beautiful colours as she first awoke. She lay there, watching the sky as it slowly danced with the new colours before sitting up and looking around. The other three she collapsed with were still out cold, but covered with a blanket. In a spot just slightly away from the group, sat the four coyotes. Otherwise, nothing was different about the area. Looking down, she saw the blanket also covered herself. Knowing Lucille's caring nature, Nat made a guess that it was her. That coyote seemed to be one of the three mother figures for the pack. And with the other two unconscious beside her, the safest bet was that she had done it. Not that it mattered who, but thanks had to go where they were deserved.
Laying back down, Natalie's body was still much too sore to move around. Realizing that she had already slept for too long, she turned her gaze inwards to the Soulscape. As she entered, she felt a bit better capability to move her view throughout the small world inside of her. It almost felt like moving around the energy she had before. Realizing this, she spent some time moving and adjusting her field of view. At the moment, it was sluggish to move, but she found she could also magnify slightly now. If this growth was due to her practice with moving around the energy inside of her, she needed to practice more. She may eventually be able to interact with the Soulscape herself, instead of needing help from a canine. And if any of them get injured, she might be able to have her view inside act as a direct microscope. Being able to see stuff up close and on a microscopic layer helped greatly when it came to treating people's injuries. Though it could also help her understand how things may have changed. That made her think about her view. Would she be able to switch her view to an x-ray style, seeing just the bones of the canines inside?
Putting those questions aside until the future, Nat shifted her view around till he found Bryden, with Emily plastered to his side as they slept. As she got closer to the sleeping pair, Nat focused in on Bryden. There was no sign of any wounds, nor where there any signs of scaring anywhere on him. It was as if he had been completely reborn into a brand-new body. She was not able to zoom in all that much at the moment, but since he looked fine enough, she would wait until he woke up before prodding him with questions and fingers. As she loosened her inspective gaze, she notices that something was different about Emily. As she looked closer, she noticed that the wolf in question was starting to show signs of being pregnant. That day a week ago must have been successful, as signs did not start appearing in wolves until their pregnancies were about halfway to term. All variable on each individual female of course. Moving around inside the Soulscape, she noticed that each of the female canines that were sleeping in there were starting to sport the signs of new life. All save Seeka that is. Nat had yet to give her approval for her to pounce on scout, but she promised herself that she would give him a check over at first opportunity. After all, they were about to be swarmed by a lot of puppies.
Right, the pups! In her constant rush to keep moving, Nat realized that she had never checked to see where the pups they had were at, and how the Soulscape's time acceleration was affecting them. Moving her view over, she found that all of them were sleeping together, wolf and coyote together in a pile of fluff. Looking closer, she made a note that for their sizes, they all seemed to be relatively close in age. This made it easier to find a starting point, knowing that Rogue and Spirit were just at the thirty-six weeks old point when she last did their physical before the event. However, they were all easily looking to be at around forty-four-week-old pups. If they were small dogs, this would be getting close to the end of their growth cycle. However, they were still very small compared to their parents, clearly showing they all had quite a ways to grow.
Seeing where everyone was at was meant to help de-stress Natalie, however now she was worried for entirely different reasons. Too much stress on the mothers would be bad for their pups. Shannon had been both right and wrong apparently. They did need a break, but taking a break for only a day was not what was currently needed. They would probably need to take a break for at least the next week or so. Given that the canines all showed signs of pregnancy a day earlier than she had originally expected, she had no idea on when they would actually give birth. They would need to take care and be patient with where they were for the time being, just to make sure that all pups would be born healthy and safely.
Turning her view back out into the world, Nat found that the sky had become brighter, and she realized that all of her investigating inside took far longer than she realized. Looking around, nothing other than the sun had ended up moving. Turning her head to look towards the coyotes, she decided to get clarification. 'Lucille, were you the one who put the blanket over all of us?' Getting an affirmative feeling back, she thanked the motherly coyote. Looking back at the sky, Nat enjoyed the sight while she could. With what she knew she had to do, as well as when those puppies were born, she knew that it was only going to become more hectic than it ever has been. Thankfully she had so many already experienced mothers inside her pack, making her feel a little hopeful for what the future would entail.
Huge thanks to my Elder Wolves Jake, Viktor, Nikolas, Saganatsu, Eeleater, Eric, Corgi, Lachlan, Adam, John, Nicholas, Jacob, Onean, Erudual, Hades, Neal, Sebastian, Sir Hellington, and Kevin for supporting me and my writing! Remember that I keep Patreon ten chapters ahead at all times. Our next goal on Patreon will be getting up to 25 patrons, which I will then open up an official discord for everyone to come and discuss the story in and hang out!