Stavanger Bay may we all die twice

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Stavanger Bay is abandoned. Arturo knows it the moment he comes across it’s borders stale and fading with neglect. The gangster drinks in what is left with flared, black leathery nostrils realizing that Skellige’s scent is long since disappeared. Arturo’s head rises from the once well kept borders and he draws in a second deep breath, the tangy brine of sea salt whipping against his face mixed as it was with ancient ash trees, and he closes his eyes, shutting out the fierce burn of the twin suns for the briefest of moments. He is gripped with sorrow and guilt that he has not been a good ally or friend to the Cairns. Though he has had no hand in their undoing he feels slightly at fault nevertheless. When Donnelaith went up in flame and smoke he should have offered Szymon and his wolves aid, he should have been more attentive; but the gangster is selfish and he only saw Lotte battling for her life and coming close, he suspects, to losing a few times. They suffered but so did he. Each rattling breath Lotte had drawn in had been torture for the Fearghal that loved her as he loves no other. He had made Lotte his priority and now Teaghlaigh stood small but proud whilst her allies were left to ruin around her. Now, they stood alone.

Regardless, it is done and he cannot reverse it; and if he were to be honest with himself he would choose Lotte over his hurting allies again. Every time. He pushes forth, past the stale borders and into the Bay’s territory knowing that if any stragglers of the Depths remained that he might yet be able to help them. Though the Depths is no more he will honor the deal he made with Skellige almost a year ago now. He would offer them a home if they wished it; though he was willing to offer any wayfarer who offered their loyalty to him, his Queen and The Family sanctuary and a place among them. Lotte has begun to show the early signs of pregnancy and with two litters in competition with one another — unless he decides to punish Olive and Dakarai by killing their children outright (as to which he has thought of a few times in his fury with them) as he threatened he would do if Teaghlaigh’s adult numbers did not see an influx — the pressure is unyielding upon his strong shoulders. It is the urgency that drives Arturo from his borders in recruitment runs hoping that if he cannot sway others into joining than that he could at the very least get word spread.

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She is alone, for the moment. Julep and Isengrim and the Shadow of Doe must have been around, but for the moment, they were out of sight. They have been for a while, she thinks, but then she tries to stop thinking, and the girl goes back to pretending she is a seashell.

She pretends to be a lot of things, but being a seashell is her favorite. Sometimes, when she's too tired and her chest hurts too much to keep pretending, she lets Doe's Shadow lead her down the shoreline, and they'll collect shells from the water, and Moorhen will almost smile, almost begin to wager her tail. She's watched her companions do it, she she thinks that she could manage it, too...

But then she will remember Doe and her wrath, and she will decide that it is safer to be still. It is easier. It is better. And she will lay down in the sand like her brethren, and she will wish that the Shadow would let her get washed away like the others.

When she sees the stranger - she might've called him Uncle Arturo, in another life - she does what she does best and goes still. Her gaze becomes far-off and glassy, and her body curls in, her head tucks close to her chest. Little white breaths are the only thing that gives her away - that and the rush of blood in her veins.

Moorhen curses it. She hopes, fervently, that the other won't see her obvious little shape in the middle of the beach. She'd been wandering, out in the open. Seashells don't wander, she thinks to herself. She shouldn't have wandered.

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Unfortunately for the child she stands out against the warm tan of the sand, against the swell of the tide a little further away, though it is the small white furls of her breath that escapes her that initially draws the gangster’s attention. His heart beat is loud in his ears, a soft tremble of his whiskers as emotion lumps in his throat and briefly causes it to constrict so that he draws in an unsteady breath. Her fur is a reddish color, accented with cream with the same rib cage marks that had donned Skellige and he wonders. She is Cairn of that there is no doubt and he can't remember if Szymon bore the same markings as his brother or not. Thus Arturo is left to assume that she is Skellige’s daughter. She is young, he sees. Clearly too young to take care of herself and much too young to be left alone. In his mind’s eye Arturo looks at her and sees his daughters when they were her age. Despite the fact that he was, seconds ago, thinking of the grim threat he’d issued to Dakarai and Olive about their children’s lives his fiery red-orange gaze settles upon the Cairn girl and he knows that he cannot and will not (lest he is given a reason why) leave her here. The softness in the blazing fire of his eyes is nothing short of fatherly because for everything that is bad within Arturo Fearghal his love for children is easily the purest. It is his one good quality, perhaps his only redeeming trait.

It breaks his heart to look at her, as if she is trying to hide from him. “It is alright sweet child,” Arturo murmurs to her, his smoky timbre soft: a tone he’d used on his own children many times, a tone that his children with Lotte would come to know well. He is slow to lower himself to the sand underfoot — and finds that it is as chilly as the dirt of the earth — as he looks her over with a careful, observant eye from the distance that is between them looking for signs of malnutrition or injury. The gangster is relieved that he (currently) see signs of neither. “I won’t hurt you,” He promises her, settling into a sphinx-like position in the sand conscious not to make movements that were too fast: as if she were an beast easily spooked and he feared causing her to flee. “I am Arturo,” He introduces himself to her in the same soft voice he has adopted with no effort at all. “—or Turo, if it is easier.” He adds after a small pause, remembering how Chusi had struggled with his name for a while. “What is your name?” He inquires with a soft cant of his head, unsure if she could speak…or if she would even indulge him at all. Nevertheless he is patient and tries to make himself as non threatening as he possibly can hoping that he can coax her out of her shell if only a little bit.

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I am a seashell, she thinks, furious in her own mind but outwardly, still stoic and still still. I am a seashell.

But she is a wolf, and she can't stop the irritable flap of her ear as it responds to the strange new stimuli of the man's voice. Something deep inside of her aches for it, because she is not a seashell, and she still remembers the kind, sonorous voice of Szymon, and the deep resonating bass of an unnamed darkness that'd sometimes guarded her in her sleep. When the darkness had reigned, Doe had treated her like one of her own.

But those times are far-away and fuzzy in her memories, and the flap of her ear is the only reaction she gives the strange male.

I am a seashell, she tells herself again, but an unspent shiver of longing boils up in her belly, and she wishes that she could be a wolf.

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Arturo sees her ear flap but it is the only sign that the girl gives him. She does not speak, does not make any noise at all, nor does she move closer. He is reminded of Qilaq, at her shyness and apprehension; and just as he was with Szymon and Doe’s ebony daughter he is not so easily deterred by silence nor shyness. He wanted to near her, to close some of the distance for he wonders if she is chilled by the air of the beach: wintery and colder still as it rolled and whipped from the sea. She is a beautiful child, he thinks, in the way a father looks as his precious daughter: with little more than parental adoration. It is true that he has never considered children before his own and it had been a toss up as to how he’d react: if he would love children or absolutely despise them. Luckily, it is the first and not the latter. To Arturo children are a pure light, a goodness that he enjoyed having in his life. Slowly, Arturo army crawls closer — only a few inches. He still fears that he might startle her. He plops his head down upon his paws as if he is playing a game with her, his tail wagging in the sand in an invitation gesture. “Are you hungry?” The gangster asks her on the next breath. From gauging her approximate age he does not think she is old enough to hunt for herself and though it is clear to him that someone has been taking care of her his nurture instincts deign not to be ignored.

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