With Govinda taking his leave of the coast for reasons unknown—Lucas didn't hold it against him, for he believed in freedom and one's right to do whatever they must to stoke their own heart's desires—he found himself once more without a place to go. The notion of setting out to look for Bearclaw Valley clawed into the forefront of his thoughts on a daily basis. Several times he swung inland with the intention of going, but each time he returned to the ocean-side. The air was growing cold even in the daylight and it made him nervous. Much as he wanted to go searching to sate his desire to visit, he always stopped himself. It was folly to go wandering around in this season alone, as poor a hunter as he was.
So one afternoon, upon finding himself back where he'd encountered Dancer, Lucas made a decision. Govinda and the home he'd been offered in the grove were gone but that didn't mean he couldn't find somewhere else to stay until the world was warm again. That was a much better idea than wandering aimlessly around like he was doing. And he had just the pack in mind. Reigi had said they were always welcome at Undersea.
It took him a long time to figure out how to get to Wheeling Gull Isle, as the sandbar was mostly submerged. He managed to reach it with some uncoordinated novice swimming through choppy waters to reach the beach. By the time Lucas hauled himself onto the wet sand, where pack scent hit him in the face, he was gasping and had a stitch in his side.
For my own reference, five month old Koi’s build, head shape, and size: i · ii. Coat length is slightly shorter; ears are a titch taller, and tellingly tufted. A few meters away, Koi hopped to her feet and stepped back to admire her handiwork: she’d been lying on her back, wriggling and bucking to try to make an impression in the pocket of damp sand. What she was left with was far from satisfactory — the print didn’t look Koi-shaped at all! — but this wasn’t her first sand-angel-making rodeo. She thought she’d improved on her method somewhat, going for the wet sand instead of the powdery stuff. It wasn’t quite as good as mud, but it was far cleaner.
She was not alone. “`Ohiki,” she entreated in a soft singsong, scooping up the sand crab Overseer between her jaws and depositing him swiftly upon her shoulder before he could tickle — or worse, pinch! — her tongue. All manner of scuttling crustaceans were `ohiki to Koi, whether they had a shell or not. Seelie tended to be pickier when classifying marine organisms, but she and Stockholm tended toward indulgence when it came to teaching their brood the spoken word. On the island, everybody tended to understand what the Seelholms meant anyway, so their burgeoning patois was pretty well reinforced.
The echo of a sputtering gasp caught the pearl’s attention immediately; she alerted, one fine-feathered forelimb tucked sharply up against her breast, the tufted tips of her cartoonishly oversized ears nearly touching as she strained toward the sound. Koi was not a naturally wary wolf, and therefore exerted absolutely no caution. She bounded toward the larger puppy with unabashed eagerness and took in his blushing taupe and soft cream coat with bright, wondering eyes. Concern had her trying desperately to bathe his face, little whines and whimpers interspersed between the ardent, anxious laps of her tongue.
He expected to be met by Dancer eventually or maybe one of her cohorts. Part of him thought that Reigi was actually in charge of Undersea and had the power to decide whether he would get to stay or not, and since they got along well as far as Lucas was aware, he took for granted that this was a safe place for him to be. Licking the salt from his lips, he squared his shoulders and prepared himself to make a good impression, but the someone who came to meet him was not the familiar face from before.
He hardly saw Koi before she was assaulting his face with a friendly tongue, causing a bubbling laugh to build and tumble from his throat. Hey!
he boomed, bunching his shoulders up and shaking with laughter, that tickles!
His tail was swinging back and forth now as he tried to back up enough to see the dark-haired lass in front of him, but the most he could make out was a blip of greyish-taupe around the region of her shoulder—the sand crab she'd stowed there.
Who are you?
he asked, still giggling raucously.
Koi quit her ministrations long enough to come up for air, her oversized ears perking animatedly with each booming syllable. “Tickles,” she echoed shyly, her mind blooming with citrine as his laughter danced around her. The convivial warmth he exuded reminded her of appa and Sixgill, and although Lucas was more mandarin garnet than glimmering goldleaf, the closeness of their colors endeared him to her immediately. “K-Koi,” she piped softly, vacillating between timidity and ebullience.
Her little black nose was bumblebee busy as she sought to investigate him further, but all she could smell was ocean and boy. Had she known he was so recently acquainted with her long lost sister — so similar to her in build and type, but vividly opposite in coloration — she might have asked him more, but for now, all that occurred to her was, “You? Name?” as she tried valiantly to lick his chin.
The Overseer’s patrol of the island’s outermost edges comes from a place of restlessness moreso than anything else. A reckless hope that this time when he rounded the bend that Thresher would be there, standing along the vast stretch of shoreline. The Gampr retained the utmost faith in his daughter; that she was smart enough and resourceful enough to take care of herself and find her way home. That didn’t mean he worried any less though.
Most of the time, his route along the shore was absent of anyone. But today a pair of figures dot the beach – Koi’s coat and figure are unmistakable, but the other is an unknown. For a split second his hackles bristle, a knee-jerk sort of reaction where a hundred Overly Concerned Parent Paranoias run through his brain before he shakes them off. Instead of giving in to the urge to trot over there and unnecessarily protect Koi from an imagined threat he hangs back, watches his daughter interact with the older puppy, the relaxed body language from both of them smoothing the ruffled fur between his shoulders.
His short-cropped ears twitch forward to try to listen before beginning his trek down the beach towards the pair, and he can’t help but smile as he watches Koi, who clearly inherited her mother’s attitude towards newcomers. “Making friends, Koi?” Two of them, apparently, if you count her sand-crab adornment.
Her echoing him was about the cutest thing Lucas had ever witnessed, and he believed he'd seen a lot of things. He couldn't prevent a bubbling chuckle from breaking through his lips, and there was something a little more shy about his now, too. She introduced herself—Coy, that's a different name, he thought—and then from the corner of his eye, he spotted Stockholm's bristle, and he flinched sideways almost instantly.
Don't hurt me, his actions seemed to say, but when he swung his broad muzzle up to face his would-be assailant, the blonde Overseer was relaxed. Puzzled and thinking that maybe he'd imagined the reaction, he slowly looked back at Koi and said, oh, uh, I'm Lucas.
He meant to go on and ask if she knew who the stoic short-eared guardian was, but Stockholm had made his way over and addressed his daughter himself. Lucas, of course, didn't make any connection between them. They looked fairly different to him, the only similarity being how decidedly not-wolf they both seemed.
Um, hello!
he chirped, waving his tail slowly and averting his gaze to the water lapping at the shore. I'm a friend of Reigi's. Or Io's. She said she had many names.
“Making friends, Koi?”
The tuft-eared puppy paused, her pert pink tongue pressed sweetly to Lucas’ chin, and popped to all fours like a droplet of water in a piping hot skillet. She jittered and sizzled merrily upon seeing her father, but there was no guilt or guile in her face — just a worshipful sort of fondness and a modicum of surprise. “Appa!” she chirped, suddenly mindful of her clawed passenger and her first friend-friend. With exaggerated care, she lowered herself back to the sand and dipped her shoulder so the little crab could scuttle away — but he was accustomed to the ocean tides, and instinct told him to bury against her neck until the jostling finally stopped. It tickled, and her slimming muzzle scrunched and twitched as she grappled against the urge to scratch at him with her hind paw or scrub him off with a hearty roll in the sand.
“Lucas,” she echoed very carefully (in between soft giggles and squeaks of laughter as the crustacean burrowed firmly in the hollow of her throat), “please make friends?” She rounded on him with a shy, entreating air, her oversized ears pinning submissively against her skull. Rehan, Blossom, and the other new seawolves were perfectly lovely, but they were all big wolves — and all the smaller wolves were her sisters and brothers already. She wasn’t at all sure that she was doing this the right way, but she certainly hoped so! Coelacanth loved her children immensely, but she had not exactly prepared them to be social with wolves outside Undersea.
The Gampr’s smile widens almost involuntarily at Koi’s antics, and he tilts his head slightly as his golden gaze sweeps back towards Lucas, attention caught by the mention of the feral girl who had gone missing from their ranks. “If you are a friend of Reigi’s then you are a friend of Undersea. Its nice to meet you, Lucas.” His tail sways leisurely against his hocks and he doesn’t bother to posture any sort of authoritative dominance; that has never been his nor Seelie’s style of leadership. “I’m Stockholm. Did you come to the island with Reigi?” He is inwardly hopeful; it would do Seelie a world of good to see her again, and he reckons the same for Komodo. With the gray stormcloud of loss brought about by the conflict with Aditya then Thresher’s disappearance… well, the seawolves could use some good news for once.
These were strange wolves he was among; the girl spoke in an unusual condensed, almost primitive way that he had to puzzle out, though being as he wasn't super learned himself, Lucas caught on quickly enough. The stocky leader that watched them both spoke the way Laurel or Indra might have, but there was warmth to him that reminded him of Govinda. That alone allowed him to relax completely.
His attention was stolen by Koi again when she asked to be friends, and his features melted into a gooey sort of smile, the kind that middle-aged women made at newborn babies that they could fawn over, but weren't their problem. Of course we can be friends!
he laughed, letting his tail wag jovially as he reached out to tap the wolf-dog's snout with his jaw. He returned his focus to Stockholm and said, Nice to meet you too, sir! Reigi isn't with me. I thought she would be here? She invited me to visit once and then I got kinda side tracked. I was actually hoping to meet up with her here and see if I could stay here for a while, maybe.
There was no hesitation in his request; Lucas didn't know how to be anything but outright, though he did make a show of lowering his head and ears into a sort of bow to Stockholm, who he assumed was in charge in Reigi's place. He still didn't know the she-wolf had never been the head of Undersea in the first place.
slipping a reply in here since Koi is PPC right now, that way if you want to wrap this thread up we can :)
Ah, no good news for Seelie or Komodo in the form of a reappearance of Reigi. The Gampr hides any disappointment at that revelation rather well though.
“She isn’t here at the moment – very much a free-spirit in that regard.” His amber gaze sweeps towards Koi momentarily who seems to perk up at the mention of Lucas staying. Yep, definitely going to be like her mother when it comes to gathering ‘lost’ lambs, so to speak. “You’re more than welcome to stay here though, I’m sure Reigi will be thrilled to see you when she returns.” Ever the optimist. Reigi would come back. Thresher would come back. Of course they would.
“I’ve a few things I need to attend to, but Koi can show you around and introduce you to everyone.” He quirks his brows at his daughter to make sure she is alright with the assignment, to which she enthusiastically responds. With a grin and an amicable swish of his tail the Overseer bids the pair a temporary farewell and heads off to finish his patrol.
Sorry, youse two! ;-; ♥
We can either play this out or fade it, Chels! Up to you.
“Of course we can be friends!”
That did it. Koi’s slimming muzzle dipped, burrowing into the finespun fur of her décolletage, and she spilled over like a living inkblot into a divot of sand with a giddy giggle. Her elation spiked exponentially when Lucas mentioned staying — she already knew that there were two meanings of the word, and this one was her favorite! “Appa, yes!” she squeaked with shy obedience, though she was sorry to see her father go. Feeling important, she turned to the taller, broad-shouldered boy. “Lucas come?”
We can fade since them going on a trip is a good opportunity for a new one!
It was horribly cute to watch Koi's excited little dance in the sand. It wasn't much like the dances he performed—those were more of the highly-unrealistic-but-who-cares-this-isn't-real-life break dancing variety—but it was fluid enough that he would describe it as dancing.
Thank you, sir!
he chirped as Stockholm turned to leave, placing him in Koi's capable hands for a tour of the island. It was unfortunate Reigi wasn't here, but the golden leader seemed to think she would be back in the future and Lucas had no cause to think otherwise.
Lead the way!
he smilingly said, flourishing one paw in an awkward sort of bow as he deferred to Koi.