Wheeling Gull Isle runaway now and forevermore

Backdated to March 24, 2018. ♥ Come sing along.

@Stockholm @Faeryn @Hemlock @Komodo @Moorhen @Reed @Droman

The caches were stocked and the borders were marked; every obsessive headcount arrived at the same reassuring total; Moorhen Cairn had returned to the sea her warhound ancestors cleaved to so fiercely; and Amoxtli and Coelacanth — the “little’uns” — had been reunited at last. Stockholm’s vows — “Keep. Mine. Always and forever,” — rang true and clear in his Groenendael’s memory and manifested in all that he did; and across the sea, the next generation of Cortens fluttered and kicked within the ecliptical curve of Catori’s growing belly. The sheepdog had her flock now. The wolf had her pack. Everything was better than good, but Seelie worried regardless.

Just before dawn on the twenty-fourth of March, she nosed at @Stockholm and @Moorhen, then tipped her finely tapered muzzle skyward and “howled” — a tuneless susurrus that whispered from her lips in an elongated sigh. She hoped the seawolves would help her sing their claim.

Home is not a place. Home is an intangible locus somewhere in the heart. Home is the breath shared between soulmates, the love between family, the bond between friends. Home is a not a place, it is a feeling. And over the years, home has been many things to Stockholm, but it is something he has not felt wholly since the night the Man died. And while Seelie had breathed life back into his broken heart, home had still seemed just beyond his reach.

But standing here now beside Seelie and his newfound family and friends, with his paws firmly planted in the sand of their island, it washes over him – warm and comforting. He was home again.

And as the morning sun starts to creep up into the sky he throws his back in unison with Seelie, his low baritone carrying across the windswept shores; a brand and a banner and a promise all at once, sung straight from his soul.

Her children have taken to the island and the island to them in a way that mystified her. Perhaps she had never been meant to take them from one another - but she had done it and she was only partially responsible for reuniting them. When she heard Stockholm lift his deep voice Hemlock turned to her children with a gentle smile. "Your first pack howl..." Hemlock's voice joined that of the council - encouraging and guiding her children until she tapered off her own eloquent song to hear the rich tones of her son and daughter.

home. It was not Lotte's touch but it would do, it was not their valley and Palisander's smile, it was not the tempered flame of Arturo's gaze, it was not the pile of warmth as Ceallach and Eirlys and Tapat cuddled together beneath the trees. But it was home all the same.

Very rarely had Komodo been around for the formation of any pack — he often came when a pack had reached its apex, and left long before any sort of decline — but here, upon Wheeling Gull Isle, he had celebrated the establishment of Undersea not once, but twice. There was something to be said about this, for a man who rarely experienced the same thing more than once. He rather spurned anything that became too customary and too blasé; but Coelacanth, she could never be considered boring. Everything with her, as well as the other seawolves, seemed limitless and new. Even though the island had a clear perimeter [in the form of it’s many beaches and cliffs, where land starkly transformed into ocean], the possibilities were endless in terms of the many opportunities that lay around them. The coast played host to several other packs, many of whom Komodo was eager to forge relationships with. The land, now that is was spring, was bursting with newness that simply begged to be indexed and harnessed for his ceremonies. The mottled brute wondered if he ever might find Aria again and mused upon whatever newness her might find within her — now that Seelie was betrothed, and the lovely Corten twins had bid them adieu, and the tiny Fawn girl’s absence had been noticed, there were slim pickings and Komodo found his attention to be left wanting. 

The earthstalker had been tempted to leave with Brontide and Sirimiri and Serein, but he saw the potential in the island that they didn’t. The gods had sent him here for a reason, alongside the other stormborn wolves. He would not abandon his tribe again. 

Lifting his chin to the sky, Komodo let his honeyed baritone spill from his maw as if it were thick molasses, at first low and slow and then it climbed higher and deeper and held strong, signifying their triumph. A home, they had built. A home, that was theirs.