Ankyra Sound one gonna hold my woman, another gonna hold my job

it was strangely cathartic for the boy to be back here again, back where it had all started. he remembered the dark strand just as he had left it; despite a year's difference the gulls still chattered overhead and the sound still remained desolate and lonely.

it had always been his plan to visit here - while any scent of a pack was long gone, ingram was not quite ready to leave the strand. tentatively the yearling made his way to the grotto,  holding his breath as he stepped into the chilled threshold. the grotto was vacant and cold, and the dark male was quick to resurface and leave the cavern behind him.

struck by a vague sense of nostalgia he made for the lolling water, treading just out of each frothy wave's growling reach.

She'd taken her time in making her way toward the coast, opting to conserve her energy as there was no telling when her next meal might be. Nyx had been fortunate enough, she supposed, having had the opportunity to stock up her body's fat reserves while she lived among the wolves of Ormarr. She missed her siblings sorely, however; together they could easily fell larger prey to share, whereas now she struggled to find rodents and birds for herself. Fishing was not her forté either, though she was yet to give up trying. 

Her chances of finding Dirge and Saor were slim to none, and so Nyx' main focus was with finding a pack to band with at least for the Winter months, until Spring guaranteed the freedom to wander again. However, the golden Ostrega was not opposed to settling with the right circumstances - her options were always open.

The coast was a welcome sight, and Nyx inhaled deeply the scent of sea salt, and she found herself meandering along the frozen shore. She listened to the waves as they lapped at the beach and the gulls that bickered overhead. Her attention soon turned, however, to the long-legged form of a dark wolf as he loped along the water's edge, heading in the opposite direction she was travelling. "Hello," Nyx said, pausing to observe the stranger as he neared, her posture inviting. Should he decide not to engage with her, she was equally prepared to continue on her way.  

between the glittering sand and rifling waves the lone figure paused, his muzzle canted skyward as he drank in the briny wind. he belonged here, same as the gulls and the water that seeped his toes. he may have spent the summer inland, but the coast pulled him in the same inexorable way it pulled the sea. 

his attention shifted to an approaching wolf, a golden agouti freckled by deep black and pure white. she was larger than him and from the curve of her muzzle, several months his elder -- ingram's posture remained neutral until she hailed him.

she did not appear immediately aggresssive, and ingram was drawn to the harsh yellow of her gaze. it reminded him of his family, and of confidence. 

"hi." he returned, wondering if she was here to tell him he was trespassing. "am i in trouble?"

ingram's inverse counterpart hung in the distant shadow of his brother's urgency--so suddenly as the blot on the horizon would grow close, he would fade away again... drawn to a familiar note on the wind or in impressions underfoot. it wasn't long before the dark yearling ducked into a cavern, the black appetite of the ingress swallowing him entire. 

lycaon inhaled. the sound of the tide loudly filled his ears, and summoned forth strange, inflamed feelings that caused his chest to tighten between forceps of bitter reminescence. if the boy knew anything, it was that nostalgia was just a con artist willing to sell the idea that things in the past were better than they seemed. he loathed the feeling. exhale.

his amber gaze lingered on the undulations of the waves, transfixed. the briny seawind snaked its fingers through the thick furring of his nap. flexing his toes into the sand crushed around imprints of his foot, lycaon's lungs implored a steadying breath as he took stock of the expanse. he was struck by the familarity of everything. time trapped in amber. 

mere moments passed before ingram re-emerged from the grotto--breaking lycaon's spellbound gaze on the in-rolling froth of sea--and lingered out of view on the opposite side of the grotto. the palefaced boy didn't immediately follow, assuming he'd make his way back in short order like usual. however, when he didn't, concern stirred lycaon's intuition and he trotted gamely after his brother, the tail-end of ingram's malapert: am i in trouble? causing his lax gait to hasten along in case things were heading south already. 

"i think you enjoy it," lycaon loomed up alongside his kin, the length of his body brushing against him in comradely greeting. he looked over the girl stood before them, an unfamiliar face framed by eyes of afternoon sunlight, with an expression that sunk into the comfortable lines of indifference. he relaxed his posture, diminishing any tenseness that his arrival might have introduced. "but i don't." he asserted pointedly at his brother. he turned his attention back to Nyx, inquisitve. "do you know who lives here if not yourself?" 

The dark youth regarded her quietly, his posture neutral. He looked up at her, eyes of a hue that mirrored her own, and piped up with an almost timid greeting before sheepishly asking if he was in trouble. Nyx pricked her ink-tipped lobes, curious, before tilting them back; she had been known for her natural expression (aka, "resting bitch face") among the Winterheart wolves, and figured her cool frown may have caused her latest acquaintance to feel somewhat intimidated.

As she prepared to respond, the sight of another caught her attention. The tawny wolfess followed his movement with her vivid gaze, studying his form. He wore a pelt made of ash and alabaster, frostily pale and completely different from the other boy, yet their shape was similar. Both had youth on their side, perhaps approaching or having recently passed their first birthday. She felt it was safe to assume that they were littermates, and this was solidified in the way the newcomer brushed up alongside his companion.

The paler of the duo spoke pointedly to his companion, and Nyx remained silent until she was adressed personally. "No one," she said simply. "I havent caught a sniff of anybody else in days." Which was unfortunate for her, considering she was actually looking for a pack to join. "I'm just passing through. Anything worth seeing in that direction?" Nyx gestured over the boy's shoulders with a dip of her muzzle, looking briefly to the Northern cliffs just beyond the strand.

it was a sense of relief that washed over ingram as he saw his brother - lycaon was a welcome sight anytime, and since their reunion the dark boy had scarcely strayed from his ashen brother's side. he would not -- could not -- bear their separation again, and he lowered his muzzle in an affectionate brush against his brother's tufted fur as lycaon flanked him.

the pair's attention turned to nyx, who throughout all of this, had remained neutral in her posture -- in her position, ingram could not say he would be so collected. he had a natural distrust of strangers, and an affinity for familiarity that in some ways limited his interactions with others.

he received nyx's information with mixed emotions - he did not wish to travel unknowningly into pack territory -- yet the same time, emptiness was no promise that wylla could be found. if she was anywhere, ingram assumed she'd be with company. it was not the way of the wolf to be solitary.

he craned his thin neck back and looked in the direction the agouti female spoke; the cliffs scaled high above them even from this distance, their towering shoulders rimmed in a soft and opaque fog. he had enjoyed the challenge of descending their steep stairs, but could not imagine ascending them. "not that i saw - i came from the cliffs. i'm ingram." he offered this information easily, finding the exchange between the trio beneficial - perhaps she could help them find wylla. "we used to live here." he added lamely, unsure if he should bring up their lost sibling just yet.

his ears gathered raptly over his pallid brow as the female delivered the disappointing news that she had found no one--it was troubling. they came from opposite ends of the earth looking for camaraderie, in one form or another--yet none profited. the three of them all appeared to be down in their luck when it came to flushing out their kind. whether that was good or bad, he supposed, was staked entirely on the condition of one's luck and the other's social conscience. his own wasn't in apical shape, to be fair.

Lycaon fell back onto his haunches as his brother introduced himself, and more painfully, their origins. he felt his whole being in a state like the waves breaking upon the gelid earth at their feet. "but it feels very differently now." he murmured, draping his tail empathetically over Ingram's.

then he suddenly and purposefully straightened his posture and buckled a furrow of sand between them with a flourish of his wrist. "well, if you like sand, and the ocean.." he indicated to the coastline that stretched endlessly behind them, cracked a grin. "i got the best news for you."

An air of sorrow seemed to gather around them, as Nyx observed with curiosity the backward tilt of one's pale ears and the added comment from the darker boy that they once lived there. Perhaps, upon their return and finding her moping along the shoreline, the duo were hopeful that their former pack had simply moved further down the coast in the direction she'd come from. Maybe they were on the lookout for someone in particular? Either way, it was not her business to pry and Nyx was certain that she did not have the answers her contacts within the Teekon were few, and so was content to bypass the other yearling's murmured add-on concerning how much their previous haunt now differed.

He then went on to surprise her, however, by returning to her enquiry of the cliffs at their backs with a playful quip. The raven-tipped wolfess smirked, amused, before she briefly looked beyond him where the land seemed to drop sharply into the ocean. "Water and sand, my favourite! This is my lucky day," She chirped, sarcasm lacing her tone but dominated by humour. It was just her luck to have picked the wrong way to travel. She liked these two, she decided, and looked back at them to add: "I'm Nyx, by the way."

the duo could only be downcast for so long - ingram's features alit when he caught the mischievous inflection in his brother's voice that betrayed a clever quip coming. he was not disappointed: a grin widened across his snipey muzzle and he sniggered, looking at the endless stretch of sand and sea around them.

it seemed the agouti in their company was no stranger to sarcasm - he delighted in hearing her return lycaon's barb with her own dry brand of banter. maybe it was their lucky day to have come across a companion who finally understood their off-center humor.

"well, nyx," ingram started, his expression adopting an air of grave severity: "i'm afraid there's not enough of either to go around." he could not keep up his austere act for long before a cackle blurted from his lips. mature.

an arch grin continued to trot out on his mouth when Nyx bantered back and Ingram chimed in with his own cheeky rejoinder--yes, it felt good to laugh. upon the disclosure of her name, he too offered his own. "Lycaon." his tail merrily brushing up a dervish of sand. he shouldered his brother playfully, declaring with a thespian's panache: "water water everywhere, yet not a drop to drink!"

As the pallid yearling introduced himself, she found that she enjoyed their company and it had been a while since she laughed with others. The boys were quick-witted, smart and might even match her mischief now that she'd managed to break through their intial solemn exterior, and they intrigued her enough to want to know them better. Nyx' tail lashed contently at her rear, though it stilled as the darker of the duo's expression dropped suddenly. In response, her smirk began to fade and she furrowed her brow, certain that he was toying with her.

Silence lingered, her raven-tipped ears high atop her crown as she gazed boldly at the one whose name she'd yet to hear. He gazed back at her, and Nyx noted the electric hue of eyes that almost mirrored her own as she fixed him with a stare that was almost challenging. They gleamed boldly from his dark features, and as she continued to wonder whether he was being serious or not, he laughed.

Rumbling softly, the tawny wolfess dropped into a play bow before her young companions, eyes still lingering on the darker youth. She beamed at them, her vivid eyes narrowed to slits and her sable lips peeled back to reveal her toothy grin. "Oh yeah?" Nyx' tail arched, flagging over her hindquarters as she countered, "I'll fight you for it!"

ingram was pleased by his theatrical effect; lycaon's shoulder was met with a merry push of his own as he grinned on, good spirits consuming him. the banter was just what they needed -- as nyx revealed her name he stood up, for her posture had changed.

playfully, she excuted a bow in front of them and ingram was never one to leave a challenge unmet. with a rude shove aimed to jostle lycaon into the sand, ingram scampered several feet forward and announced: "that'll be a quick tussle then!" he twirled in an excited pirouette around them: "on account of lycaon fighting like a fish." with a roar of cheeky laughter he bolted off, doing the mach-speed rendition of puppy zooms in wild circles about them.

editing an ending on as per lauren's request

his posture stiffened as Nyx enticed them with her spirited quip. Lycaon's movements became measured, his tail a slow-swinging pendulum and his eyes lucent with mischief. Ingram rattled off some heckle directed towards his paler counterpart as he delighted in busy circles around the two. Lycaon suddenly dropped into a play-bow that mirrored the pose of his winsome adversary, teeth brandishing a clownish grin. "sharks are fish... would you go up against a shark!?" he countered devilishly, slapping his paws against the sand between them.

there was a moment of tense immotility where neither wolf would connect the first blow. then, suddenly, Lycaon detonated into a flurry of activity -- vaulting crabwise with a shrill yip, he aimed to plow headlong into Nyx's ebony torso and displace her utilizing the battering ram of his keister.

the trio burst into a lively game of tag and chased one another up and down the coast until evening came upon them, at which point the boys invited this new comrade of theirs to remain with them there on the strand.

They responded as she hoped, and made to engage her in play. The darker of the boys shoved his brother and swept forward, making to circle her excitedly, and Nyx grinned at her success. She gathered herself, reaching out to clack her teeth in Ingram's general direction but purposefully missing. It was in this fleeting moment that Lycaon took hold of his opportunity to plough forward in her direction.

She swung toward him, aiming to hook a strong forelimbs around his neck or over his peppered shoulders, but the ashen brute took an unexpected course of action. He moved in a way that his rump collided with her chest at a force that knocked her aside and, in her attempt to stiffen and brace herself against the attack, found herself writhing in the sand.

Still, she laughed and scrambled to her paws once more to continue their game of chase. By the time evening fell, Nyx was exhausted enough that she agreed to remain with her newfound companions on the coast, though figured it would only be a temporary measure. Regardless, it was a chance to gather her strength for the next leg of her journey, and she welcomed it.