Ankyra Sound And I'm not wearing trainers

Mahler's offer brought a wry, though weary, smile to Wylla's lips. The smell didn't come from the mottled subordinate nor her brothers; that left Kierkegaard, Caiaphas and Nyx. She knew where to find the sea witch if she wanted to, though she preferred to keep clear of the heavily pregnant bitch in the days leading up to her due date. Wylla wasn't afraid of her—no, of course not, she scoffed—but there was a nagging feeling that she needed to stay away. At the same time, there was a nagging feeling that she needed to be close.

So confusing; she yearned for the days of her ranging youth when there was no one but herself to answer to, and her fears went only so far as how many days she would go without food. Where feelings didn't come and go like the tide, and her life had some semblance of stability, rather than the neverending to and fro of her mentality now, which threatened always to break in the middle.

"Think you're brave enough for a sea bath?" she wondered, casting the frigid water a sly glance. Having been raised on the coast—albeit not this coast, as she ought to have been—Wylla was accustomed to the sudden shock of freezing cold water on her skin. Was Mahler? "How 'bout you race me out to there," she said, jabbing her muzzle sharply to the same rock she'd vacated not long ago, "and prove you're worth your salt in the sea. You can't expect to stay here if you can't swim with sharks." She flashed him her teeth in a challenging smirk—if she could choose the animal she would be in her next life, you damn well know it'd be a real shark.