Artist: https://www.weasyl.com/~mehndi

Featured: Unnamed Brodjir female.

Living in the desert tundra of the Frostlands, the Brodjir keep their population at a sustainable level by controlling their reproduction; men and women live separately, and compete for breeding rights once a year, usually ending with about a half dozen pairings. The females who make it gorge themselves on massive amounts of food before actually mating, bulking themselves up with stores of fat.

After pairing off and "seeing to business", the females go off on their own and dig themselves a den in the frozen wilderness, where they enter the Sleep for the bulk of their pregnancy, almost a full year. Over this time, the fat they built up is used to sustain not only themselves, but (hopefully) their growing cub. And once the year is up, a female will typically wake up feeling as though she'd just had a pleasant nap... except for having suddenly lost massive amounts of fat and muscle, and finding herself pregnant and ready to drop.

Questions are welcome.