Survival was growing more and more difficult. Skellige had only managed to catch small rodents to tide his persistent hunger over. He knew that if he could find a more permanent sanctuary. He had trailed the coast for a short while. The inky savage felt at home on the sands. Had it not been for the arrival of Ksenia, he would have remained there. Nevertheless, the dark brute would soon return to the brine-riddled sea shore to claim a home for himself. If his pale sister stood before him, he would cut her down. No force on earth could stop him this time.
 
Padding through the forest at a steady pace, Skellige would not have noted the slumbering she wolf had it not been for the gold in her pelt, which stood out from the forest floor. The eldest Cairn flicked his ears forward and heeded the woman with a cold stare. The shadow of a creature did not speak; he merely loomed.

The wraith’s intentions had not been to rouse the woman from her slumber. She was doing him no harm by seeking dreams beneath the overhanging branches. The inky monster was curious to know why she would allow herself to rest in such vulnerability. How could the strange female find peace in the vast open terrain of the forest? Casting aside the thought, he peered at her strangely.
 
The swarthy male had no aim to mark the forest as his own. His experience with the territory had not been promising thus far. And try as he might, the titan could not keep himself from the sea for too long. He yearned to feel the scent of the brine again, and to have his inky pelt crusted in salt from the lapping waves. Skellige had known nothing else; the ocean was bred into his blood and soul. For all intents and purposes, this golden woman was in no danger of him claiming her land.
 
She watched him with a cautious curiosity, but the large male did not speak to her. He merely allowed his mahogany gaze settled on her slender features, holding his silence.  

His silence did not typically derive comfort from others. Skellige had been described as many things; he was an unpropitious, daunting creature. The idea that this woman did not move before him was peculiar, even to the russet-eyed titan. Instead, she cast her gaze to him calmly and inquired as to whether or not the forest belonged to him. Immediately, his lip curled and he scoffed in response to such a question. Did the blood in his veins not howl that he was forged by the ocean’s waves? Flicking his tail upwards, the inky feral shook his head.
 
“I belong to the sea,” a guttural growl slithered past his dark lips and he cast his eyes to her own, locking them intensely. Flicking his salmon-colored tongue across his muzzle, he wondered for a moment if she happened to the call the forest her own. It would have been a strange way to demonstrate this, however, and so he cast the thought from his mind and returned to his quiet looming.

In turn, the golden woman spoke to him of her own home. His nose crinkled at the sound of the sands, and he wondered if she was referring to the very sands that he knew so well. She was foreign and strange, so he could not conclude that she was speaking of the sands that spoke to the waves. Instead, she must have been from some other land; somewhere he had no knowledge of. Skellige was intrigued for a moment before he pushed the questions aside and simply accepted her words for face value. It was of little good to him to question the woman on her homeland.
 
Ears cocked forward, the dark-furred man lowered his head slowly. “Then it seems we are both out of place,” he concluded with a rasp in his voice. What they were to do with that information was uncertain. He had enough intelligence in his mind to face common obstacles, but the eldest Cairn was not always astute at expression.
 
The woman examined him with a probing stare that he did not dare to question. She was just as tameless as he, only in a different sense of the word.

The woman's query caught his ears and the dark male held her gaze to his own for a long moment before bowing his head in response. "Yes. I will always return to her," came his verbal answer. The sea was so much a part of him that it pained the pitch-coated titan to be far from her for very long. He could feel the yearning in his gut. Every day spent away from the crashing water was anguish. Skellige knew that he could not waste time in claiming a home. He would need to recruit wolves from that land. As detached as he was, he knew better than to continue down the path of solitude. It would do him more harm than good. 

"Join me," the crack of his baritone struck the open air with surprising command. If the golden woman were to deny him, he would not condemn her for it. Still, Skellige knew that the sands of the ocean would be as close as she would find to a home. And he would offer that to her. 

The woman struck him as odd, though he could not have been able to properly explain why. She seemed haughty in many ways, though she spoke with an age-old knowledge that Skellige could not have matched. It was evident that her culture was the most prominent aspect of her life. This was admirable; the dark wraith knew the dignity of birth. She made him curious, and set a fire inside of his gut. The sleeping woman in the woods was just as unbroken as he, but from a different walk of life. They were similar in that sole sense… as different as night and day in others.
 
When the female agreed to travel with him, the dark-furred brute cast his auburn gaze towards the path he had intended to follow and moved forward. Every so often, he would cant his skull to peer at the woman. The gold of her fur danced like fire in the glowing sun.

The wraith was reticent at best. His companionship came in the form of a hulking pitch creature. And though he breathed the same air as those around him, there was a rasp to his breath that left others with an unease. The golden woman found his nature to be curious. Skellige was quite simple though. He was washed with the saline of the ocean at birth. Salt was in his blood. Just as the female belonged to the warm grit of the desert sand, he belonged to the rising tides and the undertow. In this sense, they were almost a yin and yang. She was the sandstorm and he was a riptide.
 
Feeling her eyes on the pitch in his coat, he slowed his pace momentarily and blinked at the stranger – still – wondering if her thirst was the same as his. “Tell me of your sands,” he spoke to her after a long pause. If they were anything like his own, perhaps they would find a commonplace.