Wheeling Gull Isle Walk the Plank, Ye Scurvy Dog

So I got impatient  <.<  >.>  Hehehe.

 
The scent and taste of the sea were in his nose and on his tongue, cold and almost unbearably salty. He coughed a little, spreading his jaws wide and lowering them toward the sand as his long pink tongue curled and contorted in a futile attempt to lessen the foreign discomfort, but even when he resorted to scraping his teeth along the top of it it didn’t really do much. He was cold and terribly thirsty, and likely only slaking the latter with something less heavy than a couple additional gallons of ocean was going to fix very much of that.
 
The spiked fur on his throat was smeared with speckly sand that ordinarily would have matched its color near-exactly, but at the moment both were unevenly darkened from their recent thorough soaking. The same pattern of sand was strewn here and there throughout the rest of his pelt, for which a quick shivering shake did little to dislodge the wet clumps from its midst. He continued to grimace and slide his tongue along his front teeth a few times as he raised his head and looked around, nose working overtime in-between its snorting and snuffling attempts to clear the last of the seawater out. The salty scent of the sea was overpowering, to the point that little else got past its tang, though thankfully that was slowly receding as his nares dried out. Driftwood sneezed, and scraped a paw across his nose, and lifted watering eyes to scan the landscape again.
 
Empty, and unfamiliar; there was little there to truly tell him anything. The sandy beach curved away from him in both directions in long, elegant swoops, and the trees that lined its edge opposite the sea quickly grew to thick impenetrability. Ordinarily he would have appreciated the serene beauty of the expanse more, but right at the moment the sly tickling of a small breeze was getting under his skin and making him shiver more. Still snuffling, he moved toward the evergreens, only to be distracted by a small, darker patch of color off to his right revealed half-buried in its own hummock of sand. He blinked away another layer of sea and then moved toward the object: a middling-sized hunk of ocean-weathered wood still in the process of turning from earthy brown to silvery-gray. Its smooth curves beckoned to him, and with a little lift of his tail he bent down and picked it gently up before turning back toward the trees. As he trotted toward them once more, however, his pace slowed and then staggered to a halt, as the strengthening scents smacked him directly in the face. The traces of other wolves had been more subtle and intermittent on the beach, and more easily drowned in the oceanwater’s musk; the forest however contained much clearer smells which struck him unmistakably as he dropped the driftwood branch and gingerly stretched out his watering nose to get a better sniff.
 
The shelter of a dugout beneath some nice thick tree roots looked awfully inviting right now, which was a shame, because the trunks were drenched in layers of scent signage. An extra-big shame too because as was also coming increasingly to his awareness Driftwood had to go, and soon. His nose twitched first one way, then the other as he stood there indecisively for a long moment. Then his left rear leg came up to scratch suddenly at his belly in ticklish discomfort, and he snorted and backed away a step. After another long, hesitant glance at the treeline, with forepaw uncertainly half-raised, Driftwood turned and scooted another few steps back down the beach. Then he squatted awkwardly for another few moments. With a sigh of relief, and another reluctant glance toward the sheltering boughs of the trees, he moved to pick up his chunk of driftwood once again. He figured he could hold its worn curves comfortingly in his jaws while he thought all this through, and figured out just where he was going to find a freshwater source, whilst not stomping all over the toes of the locals if he could help it.