OOC Verusha is so crazy. All bold & italic is Verusha speaking, all regular bold is Liliya.

Word Count → 500+

It was some strange, ungodly hour when the coyote woman came to the place her daughter slumbered within the ruins and screeched something to the jist of, “Happyyyyy biiiirthdayyyyyy!” Liliya woke with a start, every hair on her body bristling out every which way. Hazy eyes darted around trying to figure out what the commotion was as she sat up, yelping with surprise. What was wrong? What was her mother shouting about? Were they under attack? Was someone hurting her?!

Her gray eyes finally found her mother's face in the shadows of the room but it would have been hard to miss her for the Agata woman's grinning muzzle was just inches from her own. Liliya's eyes bulged and she leaned back, her jaw dropping as she looked her mother up and down in utter confusion. “Mother? Vhat is wrong?” she questioned the deliriously grinning woman.

“Is your birthday!” the slave replied. “Happy birthday, my daughter!” The woman shouted again, throwing her arms into the air in jubilation.

What the hell is she talking about? “No, mother, is not my birthday,” she began to tell her gently. “My birthday was last...” She made out the lines of her mother's face as the woman's excited expression began to melt, and the look stopped Liliya in the middle of her sentence. Verusha – and even Liliya – had forgotten Liliya's birthday last month, Liliya only realizing the date had passed several days after. She didn't hold it against her preoccupied, batshit crazy mother, but now she realized why Verusha hadn't remembered... the woman was so loopy she didn't have any idea what day it was. Or, judging by the hour, what time it was. Liliya forced a grateful smile. “Oh, is it my birthday? I mean, uh, I guess I lost track. You're right. Thank you mother!”

She stood up and held her arms out and mother and daughter embraced in a loving hug. Who cares if it wasn't even the same day of the month, let alone even the right month, her mother was trying to do something nice for her and she would accept it like the loving daughter she was.

And then Liliya noticed something... when she woke there had been a scent, too, one that her stomach just now registered as meat. Her surprise had her preoccupied at first but now that the women had embraced and parted she noticed something in Verusha's hand... a very big something. It could have been half a haunch at least. Verusha could hardly tell her own nose from her tail sometimes, and was probably only permitted by Salsoa to live because she made a good servant, there was no way the woman had caught the meat on her own.

Liliya swallowed hard. “Mother... vhat is that?”

“It is your present, your birthday dinner!” ...never mind that it was about four o'clock in the morning...

Liliya blanched, “Vhere did you get that from?!”

“The kitchen, vhere else vhould I get it? Are you feelingk ok?” The woman retorted, raising a brow as if it was her daughter who was the crazy one.

Liliya's heart sank. She was willing to bet that Verusha didn't have permission to take such a fine hunk of meat, especially not for someone as low in the pack's hierarchy as herself. She had to get it back before anyone else saw... only, Verusha had made such a racket with her before-dawn wrong-day birthday-dinner celebration that there was little chance that someone hadn't noticed them by now...