Crumb

Crumb is a dust-furred pup with a cream blaze, black tickings, and yellow eyes. He is the son of Phoenix Tribe's original Head Scout, Mercy, and Cedar. He is the littermate of Sigil and Aloe, and the younger sibling of Fern and Willow.

Puphood
Spoiler
Crumb was an opportunistic pup who was clever enough to get his way with things. He found Sigil and Aloe a little annoying in his puphood because of how loud and rambunctious they were together, especially Aloe with her loud barks and constant yapping. He preferred to lay with Mom and take a nap, or amuse himself with anything around the den. He convinced everybody he was just lazy and got to take lots of time to relax! Cedar encouraged him to play with the other pups, which he did somewhat begrudgingly. He happily seizing the opportunity to follow Aloe when cuddling up to Mom, seeing it as free nap time.

Crumb was the closest littermate to Uncle Rusty, their father's closest friend who frequently visited and spent lots of time with the pups. He would tell them stories of all his awesome hunts, which Crumb loved since he sometimes had epic dreams about the cool ones.

When on adventures with Sigil, he preferred analyzing the world around him over blindly chasing after noises. Sigil dragged him along and made dares with their sister, competing over this and that. Crumb enjoyed acting as moderator and was the one to establish the "three pup vote" system they often resort to when planning activities, which he knew he could easily skew in his favor.

He thought their Father was a bit stuck up and took himself seriously, and much preferred the company of their easy-to-please, doting mother.

Once Cedar weaned the pups, they went down to the river with Kala on her water filtration trips. He followed everything she rambled about perfectly fine, but had no interest in it whatsoever. Instead, he pretended to be bored or distracted, anticipating Sigil and Aloe to follow suit and do something interesting about it.

When Sigil caught a fish, he was fascinated by whatever the heck it was. He poked and sniffed and scanned it head to weird-looking tail, scrunching is nose at how stinky it was. It was pooping everywhere too, now that it was out of the water! Gross!

He got a funny idea to get back at Aloe for keeping him up the other night, whining endlessly to mom about useless stuff and disturbing his beauty rest. Sigil hopped along and they taunted her, dared her, whatever Sigil usually does when setting her off, and with a huff Aloe took a big lick, then a big bite! According to her, it tasted okay but it was icky and slimey, and the weird hard skin kinda hurt to crunch.

He thought the complaints of a hurting belly were just Aloe being Aloe, whining for the attention of their Mom. They kept happening, though, and Crumb realized something was up. Her condition got worse from there: she stopped eating with them, sleeping longer hours than him to the point naps no longer felt fun, and he even caught her vomiting at the Bitter Den, which the grown ups never told them about. He had teased her about the funny looking growths on her skin, but it stopped being funny the more pain she seemed to be in.

Crumb wasn't sure what to do anymore. Mom was always hovering over Crumb and his brother, and if it wasn't mom, it was Uncle Rusty keeping an eye on them. His father seemed to crack down on drinking the river water and Kala's water filtration system, doing everything he could while their Herbalist Twig was grasping at straws to find a cure.

Crumb tried his best to cheer Sigil up, who seemed to be sad all the time. He watched Sigil and Aloe's competitive relationship wittle away, and Crumb tried hard to take her place. Deep down, he was doing it for himself, since avoiding Aloe in his mind was more important - also, Sigil was less annoying when Aloe wasn't around, and Crumb had more fun.