Stavanger Bay no thanks I already 8

@Lotte, set for forever ago during the den night. Probably slightly before her Seelie thread.

While Chusi told her story, Doe shot warm smile toward the singer - Lotte, she thought - and tipped her muzzle toward the water in an inviting manner. She wanted to know a bit more about the stately woman, and hoped she might be lured away for a while. Near enough that they could still hear Chusi's story, but far enough that, if they whispered, no one would be disturbed by their conversation.

Smoothing quick licks across both Qilaq and Szymon's muzzles, she drifted out of the circle and waited for the silver woman to join her.

Tagging just for reference, because Arturo has all the handsomes.

Throughout the telling of Chusi’s tale, Lotte found her eyes drawn to the wolves of the Depths — her keen argent eyes carefully catalogued each face, landing on each unique set of features for only the briefest of moments before finding neutral ground. For the most part, she was careful not to stare; her forays into battle had made face- and scent-memorization easy and instinctive for her, and she found that even under duress she tended to remember more than she thought she would. When her eyes landed on @Arturo, they lingered perhaps a bit too long — Lotte liked his features, would have liked to tousle with the slender male just to see him dirty and disheveled — but when they landed upon Doe, she found herself immediately riveted. The quirk of that muzzle, too slim and tapered to have belonged to a full-blooded wolf, was all the invitation Lotte needed.

When she wished, Lotte could move like a ghost — and she lapsed into this instinct now, her paws moving with practiced grace, each toe touching down with whispered precision. Her form slunk over the sand, making no sound and disturbing little — and the moonlight that gleamed down, instead of reflecting off her fur, seemed to be swallowed up by it. Lotte’s fur was not glossy like the doggish creature who stood apart from the others; it was as matte and thick as smoke and fog. She slipped up alongside the golden-eyed female, casting a reassuring smile toward Chusi lest the child think herself abandoned by a member of her audience, and lay upon her stomach in the sand beside her significantly smaller ally. “I am at your service, my muse, päiväperhonen,” she whispered in her grandiose way, though her desire for conversation was of a more serious nature. “Shall I sing you to sleep?” A coy smile swept across her lips — no more the ingénue, Lotte appeared before Doe as a most accommodating, most practiced serving girl to her mistress, eager to please in whatever way she was bidden.

Doe's eyes flashed warmly at the flirty nature of the dark woman. While not very much given to accepting feminine advances, she was well-versed in the ways of glinting eyes and womanly wiles and could appreciate the art - and besides, who didn't like such attention lavished on them?

"It is not time for sleeping, yet," she gently chided, words teasing even as she passed a critical eye over the wonton's face, searching for something she couldn't quite put into words. She did not expect Donnelaith to send fighters or murderers into their midst, but maybe, maybe... Well, there was no telling. Doe had other things to talk about. "Are you enjoying yourself?" she asked softly, eyes flickering back to Artuo and Chusi as she spoke.

The intent, watchful way the odd-eared woman’s gaze grazed Lotte’s black-masked features might have been unsettling to a less practiced wolf, but the Ansbjørn girl was well accustomed to scrutiny and her eager, appeasing expression did not waver. Besides, it pleased her to have the golden-eyed dancer’s largely undivided attention. “I am,” she affirmed in a low undertone. “I am newly come to these wilds, and I do not understand what it is you celebrate here,” she confessed, “but I am willing to learn.” Her gaze fluttered to Arturo and Chusi but returned almost immediately to Doe, about whom she was incredibly curious. “I am called Kitku,” she said, feeling a stab of guilt at lying to the rust-winged butterfly. There was a measure of truth to her words. She had been called Kitku by a fair few, and not even the eradication of those few by her own fangs — a necessary evil — could delegitimize her claim to the moniker. “May I ask what it is you wish to be called?” Her smile, bright and warm, intimated that she would like nothing more than to address Doe with her typical verbosity, but respect for the slim-muzzled woman bade her ask.

There was a lilting accent to the woman's words that Doe found she rather enjoyed. Her voice, too, was warm and frothy, a bit like the sea on a hot summer day. (Would she ever think again in terms of her old home? Doe didn't know if she would have had a way to describe it if she had not lived the life she had now!) Still, there was sometimes danger in such honeied words. She eyed the woman - Kitku - one more time before replying.

"Doe Cairn," she said simply, seeing no reason to weave poems for a woman who could do it well enough on her own. Still, she offered a contented grin while one ear quirked toward Chusi's sad and wandering tale. "We come together to celebrate each other; that we have lived to see another starlit, sea-kissed, moonless night," the Atoll explained, eyes sweep across the gathering that'd come to her call. "It is a time to be together and share sorrows and joys - to mourn those who were at the last Den Night, but have missed this one, and to laud those who have come new, or who have come again to be with us."

There were old words to Den Nights, too, as there were old words to the Vows. But while the Vows were sometimes spoken in the Common Tongue, Den Nights had always been sacred times, and they'd used only their softer, older words. She'd never bothered to translate them, but she supposed she would have to, now.

"What do you celebrate, Kit?" she wondered.

I feel like this is not a very Lotte-ish post. x__x My brain is mashed potatoes.

“Doe Cairn,” repeated Lotte carefully. It was on the tip of her tongue — “ah, but I jest with you, tiny dancer, for Lotte Ansbjørn is my name!” — but she had come too far to change her mind now. Courage, she chided herself, wearing an expression of attentiveness that belied her inner turmoil, immerse yourself in your role! A warm smile shaped the bard’s generous mouth as the muse spoke lines of poetry wholly her own. “‘To celebrate each other,’” repeated the soot-stockinged hoyden, mulling over the words, rolling them about in her mind like baubles to be selected and cherished, “and to mourn those we miss.” Marbas was not a lingering character in Lotte’s play, but Dagfinn — ai, minun kaksonen! — Lotte did not know how long she could be happy living without her twin at her side. She could always trust him to keep her secrets and — well, quite simply, she could always trust him. Always.

“I?” she questioned rhetorically, and turned her attention to Chusi as the girl finished her tale. She bared as much of herself as she could to Doe, trading what information she dared for the information she longed to gain. “I come from a land where there is almost always snow,” she said in Kitku’s lilting mezzo-soprano. “We celebrate the hunt, a battle honorably won, the birth of new young — we celebrate life, and…” The English word eluded her for a moment, and her tongue worked furiously in her mouth to find it as her muzzle crinkled with indecision. “To live is to fight, to sing, to celebrate,” she fumbled, wishing Dagfinn was here to help find the word she lacked. Without him she was a passable bard, but an unfinished one. Helplessly she turned to Doe and shook her head. “Your common tongue turns my tongue to sap,” she admitted. “Every day is to celebrate. Celebrate as life dictates.” A smile broke over her features as softly she laughed at herself. What a mess she’d made of that reply!

There was a brief pause during which Doe lauded little Chusi for her tale, but soon enough, she returned to the conversation at hand, and the dark creature before her. Doe's yellow eyes traced the flare of whiskers, the thick cowl of her throat, the slvete stocking'd legs, the moon-touched ash in in her eyes. For a long time, she stayed silent, measuring. Part of her had forgotten there'd been a conversation at all, while another held on to the silvered woman's words, cherishing that another so close knew what it meant to be alive.

It was a bad omen, in her homeland, to speak of a litter not yet born. But they were not in the red plains, and something in Kitku's eyes seemed sorrowful and uncertain. If she needed joy, needed something to celebrate, Doe would grant her this knowledge. She would speak of the babes she knew to be in her womb, but only this once, and she would speak of them as the gift that they were - a precious secret.

"I will bring new young into the world," she confided, certain now that it was the truth. "At the beginning of winter."

The golden-eyed muse’s low, pleasing voice sounded forth in the wake of Lotte’s bumbling reply — below the chatter of voices that praised Chusi for her tale, below the pound of shuffling bodies, below the rhythmic shh-shhhhh of the sighing surf. “I will bring new young into the world,” said she, the heavy solemnity of her tone causing the soot-stockinged hoyden’s small, bearlike ears to draw forward upon her skull with unabashed interest. A clench of emotion gripped her: “Ai, tyhmä tyttö, mitä olet tehnyt?” she softly uttered, wishing that she was not privy to such information. She knew that she would not speak of Doe’s young to Constantine lest their magic be unmade — she knew also that she would someday tell the odd-eared dancer why she could no longer be known as Kitku, and what she had done in Kitku’s name. Selfishly, the confused young rogue postponed the unveiling of her lie — Doe was too alluring and Lotte too smitten to do away with the closeness they shared.

Her voice was husky with the depth of her feeling as she fervently intoned, “All the world’s happiness to you, päiväperhonen, and to — ” She nodded toward Doe’s abdomen, loathe to besmirch their existence with Kitku’s dagger tongue. “All of your brightness and all of your mate’s strength, and all the vastness of the sea.” Lotte summoned a smile for the mother-to-be, burying the dark chill she felt and granting Doe a secret in turn. “There is someone I miss,” she confessed. “My kaksonen — in your tongue, my twin. He is the one I love the most.” It was information Lotte was loathe to part with, for Dagfinn was her greatest strength and her greatest vulnerability. Still, Doe had given her more than she deserved and she was eager to make up for it — even if Doe didn’t know she was doing it.

Kitku wished her well; that was enough for Doe to warm to her, though there was still something suspicious and reserved about the woman. All creatures were entitled to their secrets, and Doe had never been one to pry. It was enough that they were wolf and wolf, together under the same sky. That was enough shared between them for Doe to have compassion on the woman, but it increased tenfold when she shared her own woes.

Doe tipped back her head at once and gave a low, throaty howl that would not disturb the story going on beside them. Voice laced with sorrow, she sang of her own hurts and missing faces, and offered her comfort to the strange woman, her fellow bard.

It was a short and simple sound; Doe could only hope that it conveyed her empathy. She had little in the way of comfort for the young woman - only what she herself had found when faced with similar woes.

"In the death of the old, there is the birth of the new," she solemnly intoned. "I came from the desert into the land, and left breathing kin in my wake."

Doe looked up at the stars, musing. "Perhaps we shall be reunited one moon. We all sleep under the same sky, after all, and stranger things have happened."

Closing up shop here so I can focus on the Doelacanth one. ♥

The muse’s voice was beautiful, and Lotte tipped her head back to savor the sweet sound of it before adding her own, her timbre airy and light, ghosting along Doe’s undulating song, twining in and around it but never overshadowing it. All too soon it was over, and the smoke-and-soot female breathed a deep, cleansing sigh. “Thank you,” she said with feeling, the clasps that held her mask in place slipping dangerously. She wanted to sprawl into the woman’s rounded flank and whisper secrets and stories to her and to the little lives who had yet to see the moon under which they lay — but she knew that her welcome in the bay was temporary at best, particularly due to her deception, and elected to enjoy her time without wanting for more. Casting her argent gaze about, she observed the ceremony as it began to wind down, gently dipping her broad muzzle to press the bridge of it to the woman’s elbow. Catching Szymon’s words about seeing Chusi back to Donnelaith, “I will accompany your man and the young one back to the witch’s wood,” she decided, nodding toward an inky, long-legged, tiny creature who had danced timidly ashore. Without any inkling that she was Brontide’s niece — the tufts were hard to see from here — “the inkdog looks at you with stars in her eyes,” wistfully observed the rogue. “Doe — may I come here again to visit with you?” she wondered.

Doe sensed little of her companion's inner turmoil; the world outside their little bubble had caught her attention and torn it away. Once again, there was a mate and children to contend with, and Lotte's presence - though pleasant - was not enough to command the beta's full attention.

"Yes, visit!" she said, stretching out her neck to press a goodbye-kiss to the argent woman's cheek. "The wolves of the wood are our sisters - you are always welcome here," she explained, wrongly assuming that Donnelaith housed only females, aside from Constantine. Why would she think differently?

With that, the two parted ways.