Wheeling Gull Isle kiss me like that

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Rokig had disappeared without a word, as had Lainie and Elenor, but most distressing of all was the unannounced absence of Mou. Fires from Elsewhere had filled the sky with a sickly yellow-gray haze and had occasionally sent flickers of ash drifting across the sea, causing the Aralez to ensconce herself in her den with fits of coughing and shortness of breath — and there she mourned the bad news @Stockholm brought home, nursing the worry that she had failed the seawolves so soundly that they would all disperse a second time. There was a disconnect in the pack, and she attributed it wholly to her own shortcomings, which she knew to be boundless. She could not find it within herself to cast blame upon the wolves who left — but she couldn’t understand it, either. What wasn’t she doing enough of?

Her thought process was not, “Aren’t I enough?” but, “I’m not enough, and I don’t know how to fix it.” In the weeks since the air grew thick and smoky and unforgiving, she hadn’t been able to speak at all, and @Reed, Hemlock, Stockholm, and @Moorhen had been doing all the talking to her children. But they didn’t know her stories. They didn’t know anything about the second half of the surname they bore, and maybe Komodo, `Io, and Amoxtli were never coming home, and that was her fault, too.

The sky was clearer and the wind sweeter today, so she stepped out of the Labyrinth, making the snap judgment to take her babies for an outing. She didn’t feel comfortable moving them to a rendezvous den, partially because of the air quality but mostly because of a selfish desire of Coelacanth’s to stay hidden away while she brooded. Maybe interacting positively with some of the remaining seawolves would change her mind, though. She nosed at @Grayling, @Thresher, Koi, and Sixgill and urged them into the sunshine with a soft whuff, shaking out her feathery pelt that had grown dull and dusty with her dip in appetite, activity, and general morale.

Taking a tentatively deep breath, she danced toward a mossy knoll and drank deeply from one of the sweetwater rills that dappled the lush green ground. She was mindful of how close the puppies got to the water’s edge, and her jaws plunged below surface to catch and land a flopping cutthroat trout. Its silver sides flashed vibrantly, revealing the telltale red markings upon its chin, the faint gradation to pale green along its spine, and the pretty freckling that covered it from tip to tail. The sheepdog then sat back upon her haunches to see what her children would do, if anything at all.

But Komodo and 'Io were coming home.  It had taken longer than she had wished; between the grief and her strife with Komodo they had moved at a snail's pace.  They approached the island as the clouds broke overhead to reveal clear blue skies, and the raven wasted no time.  She threw her head back wildly into the sky and released several short, baying barks to announce her presence, @Komodo somewhere close behind.

Her nose to the ground seeks the scents of Driftwood and Rokig, but there are an alarming number of wolves she doesn't scent (recently) so she searches out her Aralez instead.  She came across her alongside the water's edge with her puppies and hailed at a distance — she was not sure if she was allowed close.

Like a little shadow whose resemblance mirroried her father almost perfectly, Thresher trailed behind Coelacanth, sort of snaking from side to side as she sought to step in the same places her mother's feet stepped. Of course, her mother's stride was much larger than hers, so it was an ambling, hop-step of a gait, but it kept her occupied and she was still able to keep close to her mother as she did so. She wasn't terribly aware of where they were going- her attention was far too captivated by her little game to look up, and she had all of her trust invested in her mother taking her to a safe place. Though Thresher was a homebody, she did not express a great deal of reluctance in going anywhere as long as one of her parents led the way. 

As her mother fished, Thresher tried to mimic her mother's movements again, but stayed back where only her front toes touched the water. When her mother drank, she did too, but she was still apprehensive of water that moved, and stayed where she was, watching her mother as she focused on the water. Thresher had just dropped her gaze to the water's surface when her mother lunged, and the girl was lightly startled by the splash as Coelacanth snapped a shining, silvery fish out of the water. Small fright immediately forgotten, the quiet girl uttered a little huff to her mother- absent of voice tone, as always- but still an audible little puff of breath meant to convey some sort of congratulations. Her little, tasseled tail waved from side to side as she then stepped in just up to her ankles, and began to stare at the water's surface, waiting for her fish to surface. 

She could tell her mother was watching her, so she stayed put for a moment, before she moved in just a tad deeper, tail waving as though to reassure her mother she wouldn't go any deeper; the water licked playfully at her elbows, and toyed with the long tressed of fur at her belly, but she was still quite safe. Another wolf approached, and Thresher's glance roved from the wolf to her mother, and back again. She gave the female a soft smile, before she turned her attention back to the water, willing another fish- but one more Thresher sized- to show up.

Grayling and his sister were a study in opposites.  Not only in appearance -- colored as he was like ice-clad stone whilst she bore the shades of sunshine and honey -- but in personality as well.  Thresher was a quiet beauty, thoughtful and considering of every sound she made, every step she took.  She was an intelligent girl, perhaps already beyond her tender age, and one could tell with just a glance that she understood more about the world around her than she let on.

Grayling, by contrast, was a metaphorical bull in a china shop.  He was loud and boistrous, energetic, fearless, and nosy as hell.  He liked finding trouble and getting chest-deep into it, and his parents' chidings rolled off of him like a bead of water off the well-oiled back of a duck.  His skull was thicker than concrete, it seemed, and he often acted without any consideration for consequences.  The colors of his fur were beginning to develop a depth of hue to them, the greys and blacks becoming more differentiated as he grew larger.  His eyes had begun to transition, as well, shards of darker turquoise beginning to freckle the stormwater blue of infancy.  

He was learning to talk, and was more than happy to do the talking for all of his siblings.  "Mahhhmee!" he trilled with delight at the sight of her head and neck darting, birdlike, into the water's shimmering depths.  The prize she dropped on the shore for them gleamed brilliantly and wriggled with vigor and life, and Grayling was excited by it.  "A fush!"  He sprang toward the creature, completely unaware of the wolf who approached them, and pawed at it playfully.  The few forceful slaps he received across the snout from the fish's thrashing tail didn't deter him at all.

By the time that the raven and Komodo had returned to the island, several moons had come and gone; seasons had passed; things had changed. For once, Komodo felt that his presence on the island was long-overdue — and not for the other seawolves who once presided until his council’s jurisdiction, no, but for himself. 

It was a weird thing that was difficult for Komodo to explain, because he had never truly been a man consumed by attachments. To ideas, customs and practices? Yes, but to faces and names and places? No. There were things in the corporeal world that were always changing and to hold onto them created struggle and strife; but the intangible lived forever. It was the way of the angakkuq — so what tied the mottled man so strongly to this one place, and the Cortens who inhabited the islands near and far? 

He didn’t know, and didn’t pretend to know. So, in typical Komodo fashion, he chose not to question it. He prayed to his gods, made blood sacrifices, and trusted that they would carry his destiny and future with care and intention. He was much too old distinguished to do anything otherwise.

Their crossing of the strand had been done without much fanfare — there had been no welcome party, nor did the dark chocolate pair issue a call of their return. They were of this pack, were they not, and were they not allowed to enter and exit as they pleased? His smelted gaze swept the landscape for the frame of the inky Aralez and they moved into the familiar territory, but he did not catch a glimpse of her… until he did. 

She stood near the stream, with four telltale bundles buzzing about her feathered hocks. The earthstalker’s jaw grit for a moment, but only a moment! Within the very next moment, he noticed that there was no biting bitterness in his gut, and no alarm bells that went off in his head. What he felt, instead, was pride. The girl was a mother, in ways that he had never been able to handle fatherhood — and did the world not need more Coelacanths in the world? Coming to stand abreast his raven, the man watched from afar and did not venture to ruin such a pretty painted picture.

Six marched along with his siblings – sometimes forging ahead to the front of the group to almost run into the back of his mother’s legs as she walked, and sometimes falling behind them all as a particularly interesting scent or sight caught his attention.

He is ever so slightly suspicious of the moving water, and though he steps up to the edge of the stream he doesn’t drink right away. Instead he peers down at the water and watches it with great scrutiny before reaching out a cautious paw, dipping it into the stream and watching the way the water flows around it, head tipped to the side in wonder and curiosity.

Coelacanth’s sudden movement to catch the fish and the subsequent flopping of said fish upon the shore quickly proves to be far more interesting and exciting though, and Six is almost as quick as his brother is to pounce after it. The white and cream boy had not quite found his words, but he had certainly found his voice, and he barks loud and sharp at the fish, darting in to try and grab for it and getting a few slaps across the muzzle from it’s tail as well instead. He huffs and paws at it instead, tail curled up over his back in excitement. At the moment, he is too transfixed by the fish and his attempts to help Grayling subdue the thrashing creature that he doesn’t notice they have an audience.

It was a sleepy little fish that took up the rear of the Volkodav-Corten Caravan. Koi wasn’t feeling poorly per se, but she felt grey and forlorn — quieter than quiet. When the train stopped, she took to the water like the guppy she was, flopping bonelessly upon the mossy embankment with her belly and hips submerged, watching the milieu with plaintive cerulean eyes. A flicker of interest stirred within their depths when Coelacanth cast a silver-scaled fish over one slender shoulder, but she made no move to join her brothers in trying to subdue the trout, or to join Thresher in watching the river’s surface. Only at the arrival of not one, but two unfamiliar wolves did the pearl rouse herself, river water streaming from the feathers at her undercarriage, legs, and tail. She cocked her head from one side to the other, her fur fluffing out as she boofed uncertainly at them.

The sheepdog watched @Thresher with characteristic intensity, her muscles tensed with a waiting readiness; she was, in equal parts, distrustful of the streamlet’s greediness and confident in her daughter’s ability to navigate it. Even when @Grayling crowed delightedly, capturing the sharp swivel of his mother’s tufted ears, a part of her was still focused on @Stockholm’s miniature. She barked her praise, the rush of her breath punctuated by a quick clip of her jaws, and her heart swelled with pride at the sight of her boisterous firstborn. Anything she might have said was drowned out by the shrill, piercing yaps of her gold cloud boy, surging to his brother’s side to help subdue the flopping fish. Their characteristic synchronicity — there was order in their chaos! — pleased her. They were Stockholm’s boys; they bore his steely bone structure, his length of spine; and the Gampr’s sway curved their furiously wagging tails. But they were her boys, too. The blue of Grayling’s eyes was deepening instead of muddying, and both boys’ ears were decorated with elongated tufts.

A glance at her girls, side-by-side at the water’s edge, offered Coelacanth the same warm glow that suggested some ancient prophecy had been fulfilled. Thresher and Koi were finespun, short-backed, and drawn with finer hands than their brothers; the delicate lines and sloping tails were all Groenendael. But they were Stockholm’s girls — Thresher wore her father’s colors, and what Koi lacked in physical construct she made up for in loyalty. Though the pearl loved both of her parents equally, it was clear to both Seelie and Stockholm who her favorite was.

A series of staccato barks caught the attention of three pairs of tufted ears — the boys were busy fighting the Battle of Fishslap — and Seelie turned to face the returning twain. It did not occur to her that Komodo and `Io had come home — hadn’t she just been lamenting what a poor shepherd she was? — so her initial expression was alert and aloof. It only took a moment before it melted away, though, and she surged forward to meet the raven on flighty paws that couldn’t keep still or stay on the ground. Her spine went noodle-wiggly as she rushed the taller female, heedless of `Io’s personal space, but she approached with a naturally self-effacing air; slightly at an angle, with her shoulder and hips swiveling toward her friend. A litany of delighted whimpers and whines bubbled in her throat. She did not realize that tears of joy were streaming from her seablue eyes to dampen the velvet of her cheeks until she paused and turned to make watery eye contact with the Earthstalker.

They had parted on an unresolved, odd note that the Aralez still didn’t really know how to process — but she hoped that all was healed. She straightened, and a quizzical tilt of her head asked him to lead her in this reunion, but a meaningful clash of ocean blue with burnished gold suggested they “speak” at length at a later time.

It was a dog thing.  The sandstone guardian accepted the Aralez' touch with metaphorically open arms, her body buzzing with unreleased energy.  Her front legs beat against the ground as her tail sliced through the air, head thrown back as she punctuated the air with more of those awful barks.

There was a small tension as Coelacanth looked towards her Earthstalker, and it caused 'Io's heart to pound and her movements to stiff.  The very tip of her tail continued its excited wagging and her body seemed to tremble beneath the weight of containing all of this energy, and her eyes seemed to be begging them to Please Not Be Doing That, Please.

The earthstalker took a step back and watched haltingly as the two women reunited — before this moment, the man had not truly known of the deepened relationship that existed between the two, and he was somewhat surprised at the tenderness with which they greeted one another — but he supposed he should not be surprised, because Coelacanth treated almost everyone with such deference and high regard.  

Then, it was his turn. Komodo did not know what he truly had expected, after several months away and leaving on the note that they had, all those moons ago. Well, whatever it was, he was pleasantly surprised to note that it hadn’t already soured. He was invited to lead and he gladly stepped into that role, offering her a sincere honeywild grin and canting his head to the side, letting his perked ears almost knot together at the top of his head. The angakkuq did not dare to breech the sea shepherd’s barrier of touch so soon, not with her having been so clear about she felt about it.

“How yah doin, moonbeam?”  the man greeted, returning her knowing gaze. Incoincidentally, his attentions then flitted to his raven, then to the gaggle of cubs which entangled themselves into a fishy situation by the river’s shores. “Err, ah s’pose it’s ‘momma’ naw,”  he amended with a chuckle, looking at each of the four pups from afar.

They should be yours, his subconscious suddenly spoke out and he froze, although this was likely imperceptible to anyone but he.

— 'no right,' he remembered her yelling as she struck him. He had no right. With a blink and a smile, Komodo easily resumed his expected duties. ‘Io’s reaction went largely unnoticed. “Lez meet the lil’ hellraisers,”  he suggested, quite interested to see what Seelie and Stockholm’s genes had brought into the world.   

WC: 575

Despite all the fuss and commotion, Thresher was still relatively capable of keeping her focus placed on the water before her, which she watched with a calm but intent stare that roved from the surface down to the very bottom as she watched for another fish to swim by. Of course, as she was in the shallows, the chances of her catching anything fishlike were incredibly slim. She should have been out a few more feet at least, but she was too short for that and the current of the water too strong for her to try and tempt it. She was aware of her mother’s watchful gaze, and of the fact that she would not be allowed to go in too deep. She did not want to be bad, after all. Hearing that word upset Thresher quite a bit, so she behaved as much as she possibly could. She knew what boundaries existed, and respected them reverently.

It surprised Thresher to hear a deep voice which did not belong to her father. Her ears turned back as she heard him speak with a curling drawl. But at the same moment, she spotted something in the water- something that was brown, and slipping down along the current just below the surface, so she ignored the male’s voice for a moment and focused instead on the fish in the water that was slowly coming toward her. It didn’t move a great deal, and instead simply went with the current. Thresher’s tail waved, but she stiffened more the closer the fish got, instinct guiding her to hold fast and stay still so that she could ambush it, and kill it. Surely it would swim away if it perceived that it was in danger, and if she moved, she would give herself away. Right now, she was nothing but a statue, mouth hovering just a few inches above the water as she watched the brownish shape move closer and closer…

When it slid before her, she lunged into the water with a splash that was perhaps a bit large for someone so small. She went completely below the surface, so committed was she to catching her prey. She felt her jaws close around something that was slippery and wet- but quite a bit harder between her teeth than she had expected- and nowhere near as wriggly as it should have been. Still, once she had it clutched between her teeth she reeled backwards, pulling her head and shoulders out of the water and her prized catch with her, and she backpedaled swiftly toward the shore where she trotted proudly. Water dripped from her beige coat and from her tail which was held aloft. She didn’t even bother to shake the water from her coat- it was more important in that moment for her to present her gift to her mother.

She gave the friendly male a coy smile as she pranced toward her mother, and with a happy chuff, she lay her prize down on the ground. It wasn’t a fish at all- it was a stick, one which had obviously been in the water long enough for all of its bark to be stripped away so that it was indeed as smoothe and shiny as a fish might be. This didn’t discourage Thresher at all, who still thought that she’d done a marvellous job at killing the stick that had swum too close to her.

The two brothers are far too engrossed in their epic fish battle to notice much of anything else. At first they alternate turns, one darting in to bite and paw at the trout and then bouncing away so the other can make an attempt. But then, perhaps by chance alone, they sync up their attempts, and with one grabbing for the tail and one for the head they finally manage to conquer the flopping fish.

Six is halfway laying on it as he gnaws at the tail, every once in awhile giving a sharp back and forth shake of his head as if the fish might magically come back to life and attempt to get away. He’s not terribly hungry at the moment, but he’s also not willing to give up his half of the prize so he continues to work at it. At some point though, his gaze drifts up to seek out their mother, and he suddenly becomes aware that there are two unfamiliar wolves in their midst.

He cocks his head to the side in an exaggerated manner, mouth still full of fish, and makes a garbled bark-chuff to get his brother’s attention. After a moment he releases the fish from his jaws and sits up – though he does stamp a paw down onto his end of the trout to continue to lay claim to his half – and tips his head to the other side as he watches Seelie’s interactions with the two. He is loathe to abandon his prize, but he is also terribly curious, so finally he rises to all four paws and tromps over to the gathering to investigate.

The Aralez was keenly aware of `Io’s distress, though she did not remove her Neptune eyes from the Earthstalker’s fiery ones to look upon her friend. Slowly, an answering smile arched her eyes and softened the taut line of her mouth. The momentary freeze that occurred somewhere deep within the medicine man was invisible to Seelie, buried somewhere so deep within his soul she might never touch it; she was simply grateful that things weren’t as weird as they could have been. The splitting of her jaws as she loosed a chipper “bark” answered his rollicking rivers of speech with a cheerful, “Boy, am I glad that’s over with; let’s get down to business!” air — and today, business meant introducing the Seelholms to their aunt and uncle.

Just then, a splash at the water’s edge piqued her attention; she whipped around to see her shy daughter plunge below surface. She wasn’t really worried — this litter had been born in the Labyrinth, and they were already accustomed to telling freshwater from salt, deepwater from shallow. Low lighting meant nothing to them, and despite their puppyish clumsiness, they were already trending toward an innate surefootedness that’d been honed by the environment into which they had been born.

Sure enough, Thresher surfaced with a prize clutched proudly between her teeth and pranced up to her mother to lay it triumphantly at her paws. Seelie regarded the gift as if she’d been given the most precious of jewels — she sniffed it from end to end, her tail wagging furiously until her body was forced to wriggle along with it. “Our Treasure,” she proclaimed proudly to the returning seawolves, the canine equivalent of slapping a, “MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT!” bumper sticker on her caboose.

“Good girl,” she praised the girl warmly, and nodding toward the short work the boys had made of the fish, “Good boys,” she added. Dipping her muzzle, she nibbled at the fine fur between Sixgill’s tufted ears. “Our Six. Sixgill.” And to her most vocal, verbal son, she offered, “Our Grayling. Say, say,” she encouraged, eliciting a torrent of childish babble from the boy, with the words, “mahmee” and “fush” strewn liberally throughout. Koi, swept up in her mother’s joy-love-pride and the female’s nervous energy and the male’s warmth and her siblings’ excitement, froze in place as her own name was gently, warmly called: “Our Koi. Good girl. Come.” Koi tossed her head like a spirited filly, or a not-quite-leash-trained puppy, as if she might disobey — but she did as she was told, answering the command and leaning against her mother’s wrist.

Ŭmma’s voice was consistently a soft gray, woven through with a barely discernible ribbon of washed out blue; but when Koi was physically touching her, she could feel colors that glittered in vibrant gem tints, lurking beneath the whitewater but never breaking free. It comforted and grounded her to be pressed against her mother in this way, enough that she could pad forward without fear or trepidation to stop before one black-stockinged forelimb. Just in case it also made her feel better to be touched, the tiny puppy attempted to place both of her paws solidly on `Io’s left forepaw, and if she was not rebuffed, would tip her head back as far as necessary to look up at her. If, however, the woman did not seem receptive to her touch, Koi would recoil with an equal amount of respective distance.

The meeting went as smoothly as could be expected, and when Coelacanth sensed the newly returned seawolves might benefit from some alone time to rest, recuperate, and reacquaint themselves, she whuffed meaningfully to her children. Four pairs of eyes in varying shades of nacent blue pinned upon her face, and she pointed elegantly toward where Hemlock, Fern, and Mur waited. It was time for the guppies’ lessons; the sheepdog nosed lovingly at each quartet of feathered heels.