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

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.