Wheeling Gull Isle Walk the Plank, Ye Scurvy Dog

Coelacanth is in the first phase of her heat and is NOT considered fertile. “During proestrus, the start of the estrous cycle, the bitch attracts male dogs, but is still not receptive to breeding.” This phase will last through April 20, 2018.

Coelacanth rose from the ocean shallows with fluid elegance, and her Neptune eyes tracked the stranger’s haphazard path with interest; she blew the saline from her lips and nose with a soft whuff whose sound was too frail to carry. The splashing of her feathered limbs was louder, and she made no attempt to hide her presence as she waded ashore and shook the water from her fur. The strange wolf, she gleaned from his physical appearance and the tang of fresh urine, was a male — slightly younger than Seelie but far larger. That was all right. So was pretty much everyone.

Within his mouth the male grasped a chunk of weathered wood that the little Groenendael immediately wanted for herself — the “you have it, so I want it,” impulse had always been hers to own, but it seemed especially intense of late. She could practically feel her blood pulsing from the tips of her tufted ears to the downy tread of her paws, and her silken tail arced high above her back as she approached. She did not move toward him directly but instead drew a wide semicircle around him like a filly on a lunge line, pausing when she reached the treeline. Boldly then, she rubbed a shoulder against one of her trees, her atramentous pelage sketched into clusters of urchin-like quills. “This is mine,” was her clearly bespoken message, and after a moment of preening — the natural incline of the territory allowed her to look down her tapered muzzle at him from her current vantage point, making her feel taller — she bestirred herself and gave in to her curiosity.

A roll of gamine shoulders spurred her tiny frame forward, but she stopped when she was still several cautious feet away. Focused on the male wholly now, instead of his marbled brown-and-gray prize, she took in his coloring — reminiscent of many of her family members — and his long limbs. As damp was he was, she could discern what appeared to be a permanent asymmetrical furrowing of his brow, but she thought little of it. He reminded her of Aditya in a way, and her favorable impression of the Morningsider made her eager to make this new wolf’s acquaintance. Tilting her head to one side, then the other, like a curious bird, she boofed at him pointedly, the sound little more than a huff of breath. Who was he, and what did he seek so ardently?