Wolf RPG

ava had gone to look for abel — gone now, without a trace. 

she thought of psalm as she forded the landbridge. how gracefully her fins must cut through seawater, while ava’s flopped!

the water rose to meet her, each grey wave wizened by choppy white tips. 

her small figure could be seen bobbing in the blue — but the more she pedaled, the harder the current worked against her. 

suddenly, the shore was very far away — the work of a riptide which had whisked her out plumb into the open bay. 

she struggled and kicked in the rising water, but she was so tired. she tried to orient herself but now sweetharbor’s shoulder was turned away, made cold by distance. 

all of her senses were filled by the hungry lap of waves. 

a dark shape rose from the water some several hundred yards from her. ava squinted, mistaking it for some sort of flotsam until a noise erupted from it that had her waterlogged ears pin instinctively. a gout of white spray shot from it, and then the fin disappeared in the water. 

she whined anxiously; every gasp was now a fight for survival. her legs slowed. her lungs burned. a rising sense of panic set in. 

 more than once a wave slapped right over her, pulling her into the undertow. 

and then, suddenly — a force she could not describe for the impact of it knocked her clean out —

Caracal must have died and, despite all his piety, he went straight to hell.

The current level involved watching helplessly as his only remaining adopted child was tortured by various oceanic forces. The riptide wound up for the pitch and the “blackfish” swung for the fences, with poor Ava standing in for the baseball in this terrible metaphor.

Somehow, he dove in and swam out to her before either one consumed her. He swallowed a lot of seawater in the process—she probably did too—but Caracal dragged Ava’s limp body back to the island where the two of them collapsed on a spit of wet sand just beyond reach of the surf.

Ava, Caracal tried between heaving breaths, gently shaking her as he glanced at the incoming tide.

She wasn’t responsive, so he grabbed her salt-soaked scruff and dragged her further up the shoreline, just in case the “blackfish” decided to come after them. Ignoring how shaky and weak he felt, he bent over Ava and began some crude imitation of CPR.

the last thing ava saw was a dark fin cutting roughly through the water; then it too slipped beneath the surface, bubbles of water tension spilling in a strangely ominous swirl.

and then it went black. she was not even aware of how her body was hurled into the air like a softball — or how, when her orbit came plummeting back to the surface, her skin came into impact with the toothsome snarl of the sea.

perhaps it was better for her survival that she’d been knocked unconscious; who knows how much further damaged her bones and organs would have been if she fought with gravity’s unimpeachable force during her descent. 

she was saved by her father. they bobbed against the fighting tide, but at last she was supplanted on the shore, limp as a doll. her tongue lolled to one side, her jaws slack.

he dragged her further from the sea’s tough, coarse grains of salt collecting on her pelt. she was laid straight on her right side, her breath scarcely perceptible over the dull thrashing of the tide.

caracal must have been terrified — truly — as his little daughter laid still in the cold sand. he worked tirelessly to save her; his paws pressed against her chest in forceful compressions that shook her entire limp frame.

at last something unwedged itself from within her. with unexpected force, ava spat out a gale of bilgewater, rising to life in a series of choked coughs.

His efforts paid off eventually. Fighting the urge to sag in relief, Caracal made sure to help clear Ava’s mouth of water, then gently rolled her to face away from him so he could thump her back. When her breathing began to regulate, he finally let himself sink backward into the dry sand, every limb quivering.

Just keep breathing, Ava, he murmured. Just keep breathing.

It was a lot easier said than done, not just in this moment, but in this life. Hidden behind the curve of his daughter’s shivering back, Caracal wept as quietly as he could.

a riot of salt and phlegm spewed from ava’s jaws, burning her nose and lips. she heaved, instructed to keep breathing — but coughing fits overwhelmed her. 

spittle frothed her lips as caracal thumped her back; he wept, but ava did not see past her own salt-streaked cheeks. 

her breathing gradually rattled off into regularity as she processed what happened. abel, gone. the water dark and deep. a fin rising in the roiling depths; and pain — enormous, unthinkable pain —

ava turned to her father’s chest and clutched him tightly, the feeling of being impossibly fragile and small overwhelming her as sobs wracked her body.

After a small eternity, Ava began to breathe somewhat normally. Caracal’s touch became soothing now, his paw gently rubbing up and down her back. Ignoring the tears joining the rest of the saltwater on his own face, he bent down to clean hers. Sometime during these gentle ministrations, she reached out and clung to him. Caracal folded over her, cradling her close to his chest and slanting his face away to avoid dripping tears on top of her small head.

You’re gonna be okay, little girl, he crooned. We’re gonna be okay.

He had been so caught up trying to get her out of the water before she drowned and then clearing her lungs of water, he hadn’t really thought about the whale’s strike. When it hit him—sort of like the orca’s fluke had hit her—Caracal’s jaw clenched while the rest of his body loosened. He continued holding Ava, though not so tightly, knowing she must be in pain.

I won’t leave you. But I want to find you something to help with the pain. Do you think you can walk, Ava? If I support you?

while everything hurt and she could truly piece nothing together, what shocked ava amara most was the total lack of compliance in her body. 

she clung to caracal in the manner of a newborn bat; her skin crawled, her muscles shook and trembled. 

he groomed her face. he crooned. and when she felt his body shift away she held all the tighter, shaking her head violently. 

no! don’t leave me! it didn’t matter caracal had no intention to. ava’s fear in that moment was illogical. 

but she knew it would do no good to fight. gingerly she placed one paw down, then the other — struggling to command a body that now seemed out of sync and deeply uncomfortable.

Ava clutched at him and Caracal very gingerly held onto her, making soothing, shushing noises as he gently nosed her forehead. He opened his mouth to tell her she didn’t have to move, that he would call for help. But then he felt her slipping out of his grasp. She took a shaky step, then another, and that decided it for him.

Placing a paw gently on her shoulder, he said, If it hurts too much, sit still. I’ll call for someone.

He just hoped they would come. Caracal thought of @Heda first and foremost, of course, but when he raised his voice—garbled by saltwater, shaky and weak—he cast a wide net, fishing for any of the souls in Sweetharbor to come to their aid.

it would take ava hours to come out of shock. 

she scarcely registered the howl that spilled from her father’s lips. heda came almost immediately, she was regarded in that distant way, as if ava was peering through glass. 

the adults around her spoke, shook, cried — but ava was dumb to them. she leaned against both parents, and when escorted back to the den, treated with whatever was at hand, it took her a long time to close her eyes;

for every time she did, all she saw was the harsh edge of a fin cutting through the water.