Ankyra Sound a grey mist on the sea’s face

Takes place on the evening of May 27, 2017.

@Thuringwethil [and @Eske by extension] ♥

The little stray didn’t stop running until she collapsed.

Everything — the uneven roar of her heart, the searing burn in her lungs, and the stabbing ache in her malnourished limbs — took second place to the terror that lived in her flesh, brought to life by the sight of the sap-seeping sequoias. As soon as she was able, she was up and moving again, her catlike paws following the unnaturally drawn high tide line in a direction that didn’t feel quite right.

North was home. West was freedom.

Right now, though, west was memory — and the tiny Groenendael cross didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with it. The feeling that she was going the wrong way kept her looking over her shoulder, blinking through the downpour, but she couldn’t keep still. It was evening by the time she reached the cleft where the ocean glowed blue with bioluminescent dinoflagellates, and she paused to watch the supernatural light show with frightened eyes. The rolling thunder and crackling lightning overhead didn’t bother her. The viciously angry sea didn’t scare her. It was her own kind that she had to watch out for, and as she huddled in a tight knot on the sand, her atramentous fur spiky with grime and blood and abuse, her flighty muscles twitched and bunched in a series of tremors that had nothing to do with her environment.

The amount of rain is beginning to make Thuringwethil a little stir crazy. She tries to spend most days in the cavern with her mate and children and the rest of Hougeda. It’s damp muskiness had become heavy and difficult to breathe and no one was really getting any drier. They still took to the land in the rain when they had to, stretching their legs to the borders and back and soaking them to their core once more. Today is no different. The rain is heavy and the thunder is loud but Thuringwethil can’t take to spending longer in the cavern and knowing @Eske must feel the same, she grabs her guard and emerges out into the storm.

What is meant to be only a check of the borders, Thuringwethil can’t help but press onward past their mark once they’ve reached it. The constantly rain has washed the thickness of their perimeters and there is little they can do until the skies clear up and dry up the earth. After this, she’s certain she’ll never want to see rain again but if it is what the guardians brought Drageda, they must take what gifts they may. It never comes without a price and Thuringwethil is glad they are in mind, at least, and they know where she is. The commanders must have sought to it.

Thuringwethil’s attention alters when there is a blip of dark against the wet sand up ahead. Her ears cup forward and she tries to narrow her gaze through the rough wall of rain she’s trying to walk through. She glances back to her cheka and urges her forward to investigate.

Eske is grateful when Thuringwethil pulls her from the cavern they have taken refuge in and gives her opportunity to step outside. The rain is relentless and Eske is soaked to her bone but she much rather be soaking wet than cooped up in the cavern for longer than she necessarily has to. She has never dealt well with being cooped up, far too claustrophobic to stand it for more than a few days at a time. Sea blue-green eyes squint against the pelting rain but she keeps pace with Heda easily, deigning to stick close to the commander’s side. Eske expects them to stop at the borders but when they push forth, past the markings she is surprised but does not question Heda about it. It just meant that she had longer to spend outside — unfavorable conditions notwithstanding — before she had to go back to the pressing claustrophobia of the cavern.

After a bit of walking Eske is drawn to a stop and attention as Heda stops and then motions her forward to investigate. Upon the sand is a black …shape, of what Eske cannot be sure from this distance. With soaked hackles bristling along her spine she approaches cautiously, muscles tensing as she readies herself for a fight unsure yet whether it is inanimate or not. The closer she draws the more she realizes that it is a living thing — it’s body wracking in visible tremors — and she thinks, though she is not sure, that it is wolf. Or at the very least, part wolf. The pungent scent of blood stale and fresh hangs in the damp air around the shape. “Heda, it is a wolf, or part wolf, I think,” Eske calls back over her shoulder to her commander, not taking her eyes off the trembling woman before her lest she lash out. “She’s hurt.” The Cheka concludes and pushes forth, cautiously, a few more steps. “It's ok, I’m not going to hurt you I promise.” Eske croons softly to the trembling woman, unsure if she is even conscious, trying to be reassuring though admittedly this is the first time Eske ever had to be reassuring towards anyone and isn’t quite sure how to go about it.

The skeletal creature’s tightly wound musculature jerks and flinches at the approach of not one, but two strange wolves. Tufted ears flatten as she tries in vain to shrink herself wholly from their sight, and her Neptune eyes flicker uneasily from one face to the other. Which of them, she wonders, is the greater threat? At first, in the downpour and the dark, the commander and her guard appear strikingly similar — but as the tiny Groenendael’s eyes adjust and Eske’s long, graceful steps close some of the distance, obvious differences can be appreciated. Hints of cream and sandalwood are interwoven into the younger wolf’s pelt; her fur is brown, not black, and her speculative gaze is a glittering bottle green, not slate.

The little stray catalogues these things. She understands them. Outwardly, however, she tucks her quivering nose against her frail collarbone and shuts down. A soft growl of warning ticks feebly in her throat — a timorous sort of, “Stay away…please?” — as the warrior princess draws nearer, but it is short-lived. At first, the words carry no meaning, but understanding kicks in a few seconds later — “Heda” must be the large wolf’s name. Technically, Seelie has no reason to distrust Eske’s promise — the Blackfeather wolves had consistently made it plain when they were going to hurt her. Some of them, like the pale-bellied Silencer, had made a twisted game of it; but still, they had never promised what Eske is promising now.

Tufted ears tiptoe forward upon her skull, but she casts her gaze behind her first — where is the green-eyed girl? Although the skeletal wraith has no particular affection for the honey-and-nutmeg agouti female, she’s grown accustomed to seeing her here and there and has, accordingly, placed her in the “not a threat” category along with the gold-eyed slate-and-taupe male. Neither of them are with her now, but she realizes as she tenses the muscles in her legs that she has no choice but to endure the presence of Heda and the quietly speaking wolf with no name. She’s run further than her body could physically carry her and her spindly legs have locked up to the point where she knows herself stranded.

Eske moves forward to investigate but she returns quickly with information, mostly what she can already gauge herself, but the girl confirms it anyway. She turns her gaze back to the pitiful creature that continues to curl up into itself as Eske returns and makes her promises she can’t keep. It is unlikely something will come of it but Thuringwethil doesn’t push the thought out of the question. Abuse against the small canine is evident and she’s managed to get close enough to Drageda to raise concern.

“Weron em kom?” she asks, slipping back easily into her native tongue to hide her words. Her jaw sets as she waits, curious to know what they will find.

Eske’s approach draws forth a soft growl from the inkblot that she almost does not hear but at last moment the Cheka’s ears perk atop her skull but she chooses to ignore the feeble warning. She does not believe the female — whom appears as if she is trying to tuck into herself so much that she will simply vanish from thin air — to be of a threat, or in much of a physical state to lash out and harm her …and even if she does Eske is confident she can put her down without much effort. An ear swivels back to hear her Commander’s question and Eske extends her muzzle — not close enough to touch and far enough away so that if the inkblot does strike out Eske can recoil back to avoid attack — to drink in the abused woman’s scent. As she is rarely outside of Drageda she cannot claim she recognizes the pack’s scent that stubbornly clings, however faintly it is now, to the inkblot’s fur. “em sen bilaik jus, wamplei en tri.” This is the best way Eske can describe the pack scent. Of course the inkblot has her own wounds that give off their own putrid scent of blood but Eske smells blood that is not hers as well, mixed in with the musk and perfume of others. A glimpse back to The Commander is given as Eske looks to see if her description — as mediocre as it is — calls to mind any pack that Heda is familiar with.

I am so sorry for the wait.
Tagging @Thuringwethil as it has been so long since I posted ♥

The language spoken is unfamiliar — but even if the wolves before her had been speaking in the common tongue, the bedraggled stray’s reaction might have been the same. She recoils from Eske’s investigative overture, and her lips tremble and grow taut; the bridge of her muzzle wrinkles, but the snarl isn’t enough to reveal even the tips of her alabaster fangs. She is cowed and meek, though she recognizes an innate desire to shelter in the shadow of the larger wolves. Imprisonment and isolation are what she knows and has come to expect, and she doesn’t remember how to walk comfortably beneath the open sky anymore.

The atramentous little Groenendael has no way of knowing that Doe and Szymon’s only son — the Barracuda — is only a howl away; she has no way of knowing that the Tiger Shark will make her own way to Drageda’s cliffs within a few short weeks. If she had been privy to any of that information, she never would have stopped here. Her ignorance is, in a twisted way, her saving grace — for if she’d kept going, she’d have collapsed out of exhaustion.

Helpless before the two warrior wolves and ashamed of her terse behavior, Seelie rolls partway onto her back in overt submission and carefully averts her gaze.

Eske doesn’t return to her with helpful information but by the sound of it, she doesn’t want the wolf lingering close enough to Drageda. The way she rolls over is enough to convince she is not a threat but she cannot proceed further north. She glances to Eske with a quirk of her brow and then a point of her nose. “Buk em au,” she tells the guard, eyes slowing grazing back over the submissive wolf. Her tail stiffens over her spine and she turns, letting a lingering moment before she turns back the way they’d originally came as she leaves Eske to her duty.

Eske is commanded to run the stranger off. She gives nothing away, if she recognizes the scent that Eske describes and it is not within Eske’s place to question. “sha, Heda.” Eske responds before she watches Thuringwethil head back the way the pair had came. Slowly, her gaze returns to the inkblot still in overt submission before her. “You must leave.” Eske tells her coolly, words a sharp, commanding hiss. It is the only diplomatic warning she would get from Eske. The Cheka’s lips curl back from her teeth and she snaps them threateningly at the inky woman to speed the process along. Eske will see Coelacanth from the area to ensure she is gone (and not likely to return) before she turns and heads back to Thuringwethil and Drageda.

When the verdict comes, Coelacanth responds with a depth of hurt only a dog can express. Torn between wanting to belong somewhere and being too afraid to let anyone close enough to reach that point, she turns her pleading eyes upon the females in whom she placed a frail modicum of trust — but although Eske is merciful enough not to attack her outright, the flash of her alabaster fangs leaves no illusion as to her intent. Absurdly, the diminutive sheepdog believes that this is a reflection of her absolute lack of worth rather than a territorial nature, and she gathers this information in and holds it tightly to her breast as she gets shakily to her paws and limps away. West is freedom. North is home.