Shimmering Sands the inner claims i hadn't breadth to shake

@Coelacanth first and then all are welcome after that!

It was a quiet breath of air that came and tousled the wisps of fur along the wolfdog’s ears and chest. It carried the sweet tang of saline and an aroma of new greenery. Strands of gold and pearly sand clung to his long legs, dabbling him in an odd array of new colors… but this truly wasn’t an anomalous occurrence. The fiery-eyed willow knew the touch of sand like that of an old nostalgic companion. Though his feet had never graced the soft earth of the Sequoia coastline, he did not feel foreign there. Already he could be found scouting the ground with his dark nose scuttling along the surface of the granules, spattering his nose until it appeared fawn in coloration. The driving enthusiasm of something unexplored was impossible and exhilarating. They were not in Kansas anymore.
 
The graceful strides of the mongrel were slowed until his legs drew to a stop. The coast seemed to expand on for quite a distance. The fire of his eyes followed the line of sand as it stretched out ahead of him. Another gentle breeze came and passed through the hairs along his spine. Amoxtli pointed his muzzle towards the heavens and breathed heavily, drawing in the scents that were carried with the passing wind. His eyelids fluttered close for a breath of a moment. The water rolled against the shores like a quiet murmur. When his eyes were open again, the willow could not help but to gaze at the wonder that was the sea.
 
The sun had long since set and stars littered the sky like infinitesimal lanterns. The moon shone against the sands, casting a silver glow that almost illuminated the shoreline. It was halcyon; mesmerizing in a sense that Amoxtli could never have shared with the use of words. Another wisp shook the trees and with the quaking limbs came an eruption of feathers from overhead as a sea-faring bird took flight and disappeared without a trace. Tranquil as it was, the silence was looming. Tentatively, the wolfdog craned his head to face his rear. The glowing of his eyes sat against the dark of his mask like a soft ember. Tracing the steps he had taken along the edge of the water, he sought the inky feather of his sister’s ears and wondered faintly how far behind the blue-eyed girl had fallen.

Ink-feathered tail brushing her hocks with languid contentment, Coelacanth lagged behind — she and Oxtli had no agenda, no scheduled itinerary, and the faraway rhythmic rush of ocean waves bubbling shorebound bade her pause.  Tipping her slender head back and pointing her muzzle skyward, the stars reflecting with eerie luminescence in her seablue eyes, Coelacanth filled her lungs as instinct commanded and “howled” her joy — a whisper no louder than the wind that carried Amoxtli’s familiar scent, comingled with an overwhelming tang of salt and the sparse promise of newly sprouting vegetation.
 
Dainty, catlike paws slipped fluidly into a trot as the atramentous sheepwolf hurried to catch up, siren eyes intently scanning the horizon, catching fire as she made eye contact with her patiently waiting brother.  Angling her slim hindquarters to approach the taller male with a graceful sidestep, Coelacanth “parallel parked” beside Amoxtli and buried her nose in the thick, wispy fur of his graceful neck.  He would have a field day here — already, the Tervuren had glutted upon the unfamiliar terrain to be mapped, the boundless treasures to be discovered, the new experiences to be had.  The Corten propensity for wandering had tangled itself deep in Amoxtli’s heart and although Seelie didn’t share it to quite the same extent, she was happy to be wherever he was.
 
Seelie tiptoed forth with cautious curiosity, tufted ears springing forward upon her slender skull at the first muted crunch of the salt crust beneath her paws.  She dipped her muzzle low to sniff at the strange new phenomenon, tilting her head this way and that — she could make neither heads nor tails of it.  Though beautiful, the glittering crystals of salt were gritty and unpleasant as they tangled stickily in the feathery fur between her toes; sand was somehow different and infinitely more welcome.  Still, she turned to Amoxtli with unfeigned eagerness, feathered tail flagging the air like a helicopter rotor as she whuffed a soft inquiry: where to?

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Amoxtli exhaled gently at the soft nuzzle of her nose against his neck. There was familiarity there; her small form seemed to fit closely to his own. Somehow, the manners in which the two sheepdogs behaved was founded upon simplicity. Though they shared blood, the two were not bound to anything. Even with his propensity for the ocean, the tawny and ink boy would have found himself content. The Corten male was the image of sanguineness. Where some would see a ravaged land, dismal in the steps of regrowth, he could see the blooming potential in the buds of the trees and the brush from the earth. The land could not have endured the tragedy for too long without having found a way to self-correct. In spite of the vicious rape on the foliage surrounding the coast, it was returning with spirit.
 
Trailing the feathery tufts of fur that lead up to Seelie’s oceanic optics, Oxtli understood well enough the questioning expression on her face. She wanted to know where they were pointing themselves. Swiveling his ears atop his skull, the Corten boy summoned a thoughtful frown to his dark lips. Scanning the shoreline, he could feel a fond beating in his chest at the premise of what could be found in the water and scattered along the silvery sands. The moon still shone high overhead and the stars that were littered above were twinkling with a bewitching warmth. Even with the gentle rolling of the waves against the shore, everything was in a sort of hush. The quiet washed over them like a blanket of peace.
 
It would have been a sensible decision for Amoxtli to point them toward the cover of whatever foliage they could find. It was late and his legs were weary from travel. In spite of this, there was a hunger in his eye that seemed to be sparked by the sands. He pulled his sights from the blue of his sister’s and focused them on the sparkling grains that stretched onward. Was it possible to find something hidden there?
 
Throwing sensibility to the wind, the willow darted forward a small distance, nudging his nose gently against the dark fur of Coelacanth’s shoulder. His features were turned skyward in a show of excitement. His soot-marked tail lifted up to flag to and fro. In a matter of moments, his brows were raised and he parted his mouth to huff eagerly. Having momentarily cast aside the thought of seeking out a den for the remainder of the night, he tossed his lengthy muzzle just ahead of them and trotted towards a particularly slimy patch of seaweed that had washed to shore. In the salty green muck, there appeared to be odd objects tangled here and there. Without waiting, the Tervuren began to nose through the weeds in search of pearls.
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From birth, Coelacanth and Amoxtli had formed an unusually close bond.  They were three months old when they met their father for the first time, and although their doting mother had more than compensated for his enforced lack of affection during that period of house arrest, precious hours were stolen away each day thereafter due to her position in life as a working shepherd.  Their human owner, while not precisely unkind, had not been prepared to raise two newborn puppies with a propensity for “singing” and therefore made the decision to devocalize the puppies and spay the mother.  It was a decision based, in her opinion, on necessity.  She could make herding dogs of them, but their eerily wolflike warbling would have to stop.  She reasoned that surgically correcting the ability to vocalize — as she’d done with their mother long ago — was a more empathetic decision than scolding them repeatedly and breaking their spirit.  Thus, that first deep, abiding love and loyalty normally given to one’s parents was instead shared between the fluffy halfbreeds.
 
Without recourse to speech, Coelacanth and Amoxtli had developed something akin to telepathy as a means of communication — although her seablue eyes intently watched her brother’s face, it was purely out of affection.  When directed toward Amoxtli, the question of “where to?” could generally be answered by one of the following: a. adventure, or b. treasure.  Seelie followed his introspective gaze to the glittering, moonlit expanse, and she saw the world as her brother did — with a tiny glowing “!” quest marker above a particularly sharply-etched mound of seaweed.  A soft, contented ripple of sound like the thumbed flutter of book pages or the purr of a kitten spilled from Seelie’s jaws as Oxtli’s inky muzzle disappeared against the silken fur of her shoulder — and when he moved, she moved with him like a living shadow, picking up her paws like a high-stepping horse to kick away the sticky salt that wedged between her feathery toes.
 
Not far away from the pile of seaweed, Coelacanth made a discovery of her own — several of them, actually.  Broken shells and larger debris, carried or blown over from the Oystercatcher Tide Pools, dotted the northernmost edge of the Shimmering Sands.   Surely there was something of worth to be found therein?  Treasure hunting was Amoxtli’s penchant but his inky sister was eager to please, and she made herself busy, fetching the prettiest shells and stones to await judgment beside the Tervuren cross’ current project.

There was a sort of saying that had been made in regards to the lack of something. Many that spoke of greener grasses and wider pastures, but Amoxtli had found that he fell more into the lines of the thought: what you never knew you lost, you could not miss. For the children had been boisterous young things, and had managed to cause quite the ruckus in their household, the Tervuren could not recall having had a voice at all. In a sense, he could have been too young to recollect such things. He had lived so much of his life without the ability to speak, that he only imagined it was how he had been born. The light in his heart spoke to him and told him that he was lucky his sister had endured the same bizarre happenstance.
 
The inky girl was everything to him. She was the only friend and companion that he should need to cross the face of the earth. Without her at his side, he would have known a sadness much deeper than any he had ever endured. Amoxtli – ever the optimist – considered himself one of the luckiest creatures on earth to have had such an incredible partner and friend. The feather of her coat was like a sunrise to his vision, and her happy little rasps of air were far better than any story that had been shared with his ears. While Oxtli had a peculiar love for storytellers and the tales that they wove, he would have gladly given up on the sharing of their voices to have more time with Coelacanth. Her enthusiasm pushed him to be a better man himself. The eager way about her was enough to drive him to the very ends of the earth with a quick step and a shining twinkle in the fire of his gaze.
 
As the dark-coated sheepdog bounded forward with high stepping paws, he watched her with a smile on his doggish features. The ginger-dappled tail behind him flagged wildly with encouragement for his sister to discover whatever there was on the beachside and to return it to their pile so they could sift through the findings. Already, his sharp eye had caught sight of a beautifully smooth stone that glistened with the color of the moon. It had been washed down by the changing tide and had only shown itself because of the location of the water on that day, but such things only solidified the luck of the Tervuren male.
 
After prodding his nose around in the seaweed for other finds, Amoxtli lifted his head upward to make sure that his sibling was still in his sights. Should she wander off without warning him first, he would find himself incredibly anxious. The shadowy girl had crafted her own little pile of odds and ends, and he wiggled his lower half excitedly at her, leaving his prints in the sands beneath him. On his dark nose there was a small patch of beige where the granules had collected.

Someone has been drinking and it is me.

Like Amoxtli, Coelacanth could not remember the sound of her own voice; the passage of air from her slender muzzle, whether swift and exuberant or slow and cajoling, was merely decorative. With her brother, the inky sheepdog cross never seemed to need words. He was the sun around which her universe fell into orbit, and his optimistic disposition brightened the darkness that sometimes billowed around her. Seelie was more inclined to mourn the voice she lacked — her brother was sunset, and like the order of their birth, she followed him; she was night. At times brisk and enticing — at times comforting and close — she was the yin to his yang: the tapestry against which his light shone, the moonlight to his sunshine, the feminine counterpart to her masculine brother. The sexual dimorphism in her breed was basically a difference in height and an abundance of fluff, and as they stood together beneath the summer moon, it was evident that his fur was longer, thicker about his neck and shoulders, but their builds were quite similar: willowy and long-limbed, slender and square.

Coelacanth basked in the joy of Amoxtli’s smile, her own inky tail sweeping the air with an answering excitement; she set forth with a will, keeping him closely in her sights. Although the siblings were accustomed to exploring on their own, being in a new place without a “home base” aroused their natural shepherd dog inclination for anxiousness. She no more than he wished to be separated for any great period of time as they adjusted to these famine-crippled wilds.

Burrowing her nose in a patch of sand that seemed overturned, as though it had been dug up or buried recently, the ocean-eyed sheepwolf leapt nimbly backwards with a sudden toneless yelp. Her jaws snapped as she barked indignantly at the pile, having scared herself a good deal — in the small hole was a natural sculpture formed from the entwined skeletons of a starfish and a conch. Most likely, one had been attempting to devour the other when they’d been pulled by the sea by some hapless creature and dropped somewhere in the salt flat — preserving the battle forever in a display that was both beautiful and fearsome. The ruddy skeleton of the sea star, garish against the pearly cream, pink, and white of the conch, made it impossible to tell who had been eating whom.

Whatever the answer was — who was eating who, the conch or the starfish? — Coelacanth turned a petulant seablue gaze on her brother. Though both creatures were dead, their bodies preserved and dehydrated by the salt, she was too unnerved to dip her muzzle back into the hole.

Comforted immediately by Amoxtli’s nearness, Coelacanth turned her face to burrow into the thickness of his ruff — thicker and more luxuriant than hers, as was befitting the sexual dimorphism of their ancestors — and allowed herself to be distracted as he led her away, toward a den where they could rest their weary paws.