"stay close!" she called to the scrabbling bodies of her children. they were young yet, but not too young to be led and carried to the beach that would form the backdrop for their formative years, not so close to the waves. but this stretch of beachline was studded with shells and all manner of marvelous things, perfect for their developing senses to explore.
keeping nieve close, for the girl was shy and delicate, erzulie watched carefully as her pups began to range along the sand, smiling at the collective excitment of the little crew.
It took some doing to get Reyes out of the den. The boy wasn't squeamish or easily bothered save for the desire to be rooted to one spot, and he took to exploration about as well as a gull might take to swimming; not well. While his siblings might've been curious of the sand and its many bounties Reyes kept to the rear of the group, alert, protective. He picked up the pace when the rest of them did but on the whole he did not seem interested in the beach or the trail that the family followed; his interest wasn't properly gathered until something large and red scuttled between some rocks and roused his curiosity. The crab beckoned to him with outstretched forelimbs and he rounded upon it, glowering, tail high and bristling like an angry house cat — and then he retreated from it to herd his siblings to safety before anyone could take notice of his absence.
it was a beach day — the kind of days that scarab loved.
stay close! he hears his mother call after him ( and his siblings ). a flick of an ear back was given to acknowledge that he'd heard but his eyes are fixated on something multi-colored gleaming partially out of the sand. it's with a single minded determination that scarab makes a direct beeline for it, puffs of sand flying out from beneath his paws as he hurries to it, afraid that it'd catch someone else's attention. he'd scrapple for it ...if it came to it, but he rather thought the rule of thumb was
i saw it first, so it's mine.
chest rises and falls with a few huffs and puffs ( because running in sand is harder than running on solid ground ) he checks over his shoulders like a thief and begins to nose at the
piece of seaglass and switches to digging it furiously out of the sand where it was lodged.
Tizir was incredibly nervous. She had never in her short life been around so many wolves at once. Adults she didn’t mind so much. She liked adults because they tended to be quieter and not boisterous like her brother. But others her age made her feel uneasy. Tizir was a quiet soul, not an adventurous sort—although she was excited to finally see the ocean. Her mother had had to coax her into going, physically nudging her into the group beside the others before the girl finally went along with it all. She decided to just ignore everyone but the adult, a woman with an interesting accent, and just look at the water.
She wasn’t allowed to get close, but now that she could actually see that massive expanse of water, she could understand why. The waves would swallow her whole if given the chance. It was right then that she felt a strange reverence for the ocean. Something so big and powerful must surely be alive—just as live as she was. She wanted to know who the ocean was. Did it have a mother? She tried to think of who or what could possibly be big enough to be the ocean’s mother but such a concept was too much for her young mind. Maybe the ocean was the mother… but the mother of what?
Tizir wanted to plop down in the sand and stare at the vast blue sea forever, but the group continued to move and she had promised her mother she wouldn’t get far from Erzulie. Sighing, she kept on with the group.
had she had the choice, cleo would have remained firmly within the den, especially with the addition of the two foreign children to their group. but all the same, she grew closer and closer to her siblings as the days marched by, and so was roused to her paws by the prospect of sticking close by Reyes. it was curious why, exactly, she'd chosen him to latch onto, or if the fixation would last. but the day she spent near to the back of the group, glancing where he did, occasionally pausing should he fall too far behind.
his sudden aggression rattled her, however, and she was quick to scuttle away and lodge herself firmly beneath her mother's stomach, gaze wide and unblinking.
grezig's daughter joined them, and had little nieve and clementine not been so close to her, she might have risen to engage the girl in conversation. as it was, her attention fell to reyes, and his boisterous treatment of the small group. surely there was a reason for it, however.
passing a kiss to each of her daughters, erzulie lifted herself up and padded to where reyes had come from. "it be a crab," she called amusedly to the pups, watching the little land-creature skitter across the sand. "be careful; dey pinch."
Reyes kept to the outskirts of the group. He wasn't an antisocial child by any means, but his distaste for the realm within which they lived was too strong for him to ignore. The cub was sensitive when he should've been racing to see every inch of the sand bar; he should've been diving in to the shallows of the sea instead of staring skeptically at the retreating tide, considering his bloodline. Instead he was relentlessly sullen and moved reluctantly after them all, alert and nervous and unhappy, while each new aspect was revealed. Mother spoke of a scuttling creature that could pinch, and Reyes stared at it from a distance, making sure to tally those notes and keep them sequestered in his mind in case he should encounter one of the cthonic beasts in the future. Disgusting.