They were absolutely, unequivocally, undoubtedly lost. Isaiah had known it after the first week away from Midnight Scar. Give him a fair chance, he'd say. Let him lead the way, he'd say.
Well, they certainly shouldn't have left home to begin with! They still hadn't found
@Granite, Uncle
@Void probably regretted sending them on what was supposed to be a day's errand, and mom -- of course, she probably thought them dead!
And what about Iris? Heaven forbid she leave and look for them too!
They'd found themselves by the sea line for a number of days already, and at least they found an easy meal in the sand along the shore. Stinky, but easy: the dead fish hardly made for a good smell or good eats, but they were better than nothing at all.
Today, though, as Isaiah trailed along the tidepools, elbows bony and stomach always growling, his eyes caught sight of the little red pinchers bobbing in and out of the water again. And, instead of ignoring them, he crouched down and watched.
Was there a way to eat them, too?
He reached out a paw, hardly thinking --
YEEEEOW!!
he recoiled and violently shook his paw, the little crab still hanging on for its dearest life.
Theo was walking around the coast by Sapphique when he heard a young puppy cry out. Ears perked, he raced to the scene of the cry. What he saw though wasn't as bad as he thought. It was just a young boy with a crab stuck on his foot. Holding back laughter, Theo approached him and gently pried the crab off with a stick, watching as it scurried off.
The boy looked disheveled and malnourished, and a bit young to be out on his own, so Theo quickly grew concerned.
"
Hey bud, are you lost?" He asked. "
Whats your name? I'm Theo, from Sapphique." He added.
you made me sing the song with that title lol. "cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in"
The man seemed to materialize right outta thin air. Okay, maybe if Isaiah hadn't been flailing around so much he would have seen him sooner. But as it was, he wasn't thinking much about anything other than the crab on his paw, that when he felt the nearly presence, he thought it was just gonna be LP coming over to laugh at him or try getting pinched himself. Isaiah had already spun around with a hot retort on his tongue, and was quite ready to dish something out he'd totally mean, and would only maybe regret later, when --
Um.
Okay.
Yeah, that wasn't LP.
His yellow eyes went big. This guy was HUGE! Towering over him, and every inch covered in muscle. Isaiah had never felt so much like a shrimp, and his bones seemed sharper under his skin than they ever had before.
He came at him with a stick, and something in his eyes spoke of someone he could trust. But Isaiah didn't trust him. He reached out his paw out of sheer necessity, but as soon as the man had pried the crab free, Isaiah jerked his paw away and hopped back a few paces. He held his head up in some vain attempt at looking scary and big, though he was still only half the man's size.
I know where I am,
he insisted, hating how his boyish cadence sounded shrimpy, too, next to this man's timbre,
I've never heard of Sapphique.
He didn't answer Theo's other questions, or give him any information about himself, even though LP would have blabbed all that out in a sitting.
Isaiah still held firmly to stranger danger - and the less a stanger knew of him, the better - even if this one seemed helpful.
hahaha I'm so pleased! xD It totally describes Isaiah in his entirety LOL
"You sure? I got lost when I was younger too, for days on end. I got sick and cold and another pack helped me get back on my feet and get home. There's nothing wrong with needing a little help, even if its just directions back home..." Theo said.
"Sapphique is the pack on the water, just up there. I live there with my family and I'm sure one of us could help you get back home if you need.." He said, figuring the boy was lost but just too stuck up to admit it.
"Where are you from?" He asked, though he expected his question to be ignored as his other one about his name was.
Isaiah was as convinced by Theo's reassurance as his own cynical heart would let him be. He seemed trustworthy enough, but he for one wasn't about to go crawling in to somebody's cube van because they'd offered him empathy and free cookies.
But a few free directions probably wouldn't hurt.
I'm not lost,
he insisted again, with a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure LP wouldn't burst in and drag them both even further from the beaten path that he already had. So far, so good; the coast was clear. It's called Midnight Scar,
he said, and my uncle leads it. He's tall, dark, and very scary,
and he bore his teeth a little, in a way Uncle Void had never done to him, but in the way he imagined he could probably do to anyone he wanted to intimidate.
"I think I've heard of your uncle. Can't say too much about knowing the pack but he's been around here big burly guy. I know someone who trained under him." Theo told him.
"Do you know where you are now? or what part of the land you came from? mountains, river, plains.." He asked, trying to get an idea where this pack was.