It was a quiet breath of air that came and tousled the wisps of fur along the wolfdog’s ears and chest. It carried the sweet tang of saline and an aroma of new greenery. Strands of gold and pearly sand clung to his long legs, dabbling him in an odd array of new colors… but this truly wasn’t an anomalous occurrence. The fiery-eyed willow knew the touch of sand like that of an old nostalgic companion. Though his feet had never graced the soft earth of the Sequoia coastline, he did not feel foreign there. Already he could be found scouting the ground with his dark nose scuttling along the surface of the granules, spattering his nose until it appeared fawn in coloration. The driving enthusiasm of something unexplored was impossible and exhilarating. They were not in Kansas anymore.
The graceful strides of the mongrel were slowed until his legs drew to a stop. The coast seemed to expand on for quite a distance. The fire of his eyes followed the line of sand as it stretched out ahead of him. Another gentle breeze came and passed through the hairs along his spine. Amoxtli pointed his muzzle towards the heavens and breathed heavily, drawing in the scents that were carried with the passing wind. His eyelids fluttered close for a breath of a moment. The water rolled against the shores like a quiet murmur. When his eyes were open again, the willow could not help but to gaze at the wonder that was the sea.
The sun had long since set and stars littered the sky like infinitesimal lanterns. The moon shone against the sands, casting a silver glow that almost illuminated the shoreline. It was halcyon; mesmerizing in a sense that Amoxtli could never have shared with the use of words. Another wisp shook the trees and with the quaking limbs came an eruption of feathers from overhead as a sea-faring bird took flight and disappeared without a trace. Tranquil as it was, the silence was looming. Tentatively, the wolfdog craned his head to face his rear. The glowing of his eyes sat against the dark of his mask like a soft ember. Tracing the steps he had taken along the edge of the water, he sought the inky feather of his sister’s ears and wondered faintly how far behind the blue-eyed girl had fallen.
There was a sort of saying that had been made in regards to the lack of something. Many that spoke of greener grasses and wider pastures, but Amoxtli had found that he fell more into the lines of the thought: what you never knew you lost, you could not miss. For the children had been boisterous young things, and had managed to cause quite the ruckus in their household, the Tervuren could not recall having had a voice at all. In a sense, he could have been too young to recollect such things. He had lived so much of his life without the ability to speak, that he only imagined it was how he had been born. The light in his heart spoke to him and told him that he was lucky his sister had endured the same bizarre happenstance.
The inky girl was everything to him. She was the only friend and companion that he should need to cross the face of the earth. Without her at his side, he would have known a sadness much deeper than any he had ever endured. Amoxtli – ever the optimist – considered himself one of the luckiest creatures on earth to have had such an incredible partner and friend. The feather of her coat was like a sunrise to his vision, and her happy little rasps of air were far better than any story that had been shared with his ears. While Oxtli had a peculiar love for storytellers and the tales that they wove, he would have gladly given up on the sharing of their voices to have more time with Coelacanth. Her enthusiasm pushed him to be a better man himself. The eager way about her was enough to drive him to the very ends of the earth with a quick step and a shining twinkle in the fire of his gaze.
As the dark-coated sheepdog bounded forward with high stepping paws, he watched her with a smile on his doggish features. The ginger-dappled tail behind him flagged wildly with encouragement for his sister to discover whatever there was on the beachside and to return it to their pile so they could sift through the findings. Already, his sharp eye had caught sight of a beautifully smooth stone that glistened with the color of the moon. It had been washed down by the changing tide and had only shown itself because of the location of the water on that day, but such things only solidified the luck of the Tervuren male.
After prodding his nose around in the seaweed for other finds, Amoxtli lifted his head upward to make sure that his sibling was still in his sights. Should she wander off without warning him first, he would find himself incredibly anxious. The shadowy girl had crafted her own little pile of odds and ends, and he wiggled his lower half excitedly at her, leaving his prints in the sands beneath him. On his dark nose there was a small patch of beige where the granules had collected.
Someone has been drinking and it is me.
Like Amoxtli, Coelacanth could not remember the sound of her own voice; the passage of air from her slender muzzle, whether swift and exuberant or slow and cajoling, was merely decorative. With her brother, the inky sheepdog cross never seemed to need words. He was the sun around which her universe fell into orbit, and his optimistic disposition brightened the darkness that sometimes billowed around her. Seelie was more inclined to mourn the voice she lacked — her brother was sunset, and like the order of their birth, she followed him; she was night. At times brisk and enticing — at times comforting and close — she was the yin to his yang: the tapestry against which his light shone, the moonlight to his sunshine, the feminine counterpart to her masculine brother. The sexual dimorphism in her breed was basically a difference in height and an abundance of fluff, and as they stood together beneath the summer moon, it was evident that his fur was longer, thicker about his neck and shoulders, but their builds were quite similar: willowy and long-limbed, slender and square.
Coelacanth basked in the joy of Amoxtli’s smile, her own inky tail sweeping the air with an answering excitement; she set forth with a will, keeping him closely in her sights. Although the siblings were accustomed to exploring on their own, being in a new place without a “home base” aroused their natural shepherd dog inclination for anxiousness. She no more than he wished to be separated for any great period of time as they adjusted to these famine-crippled wilds.
Burrowing her nose in a patch of sand that seemed overturned, as though it had been dug up or buried recently, the ocean-eyed sheepwolf leapt nimbly backwards with a sudden toneless yelp. Her jaws snapped as she barked indignantly at the pile, having scared herself a good deal — in the small hole was a natural sculpture formed from the entwined skeletons of a starfish and a conch. Most likely, one had been attempting to devour the other when they’d been pulled by the sea by some hapless creature and dropped somewhere in the salt flat — preserving the battle forever in a display that was both beautiful and fearsome. The ruddy skeleton of the sea star, garish against the pearly cream, pink, and white of the conch, made it impossible to tell who had been eating whom.
Whatever the answer was — who was eating who, the conch or the starfish? — Coelacanth turned a petulant seablue gaze on her brother. Though both creatures were dead, their bodies preserved and dehydrated by the salt, she was too unnerved to dip her muzzle back into the hole.
Comforted immediately by Amoxtli’s nearness, Coelacanth turned her face to burrow into the thickness of his ruff — thicker and more luxuriant than hers, as was befitting the sexual dimorphism of their ancestors — and allowed herself to be distracted as he led her away, toward a den where they could rest their weary paws.