The wraith had brooded in the days that had followed without the pale girl there to tend to his wounds. She had informed him that it would be no more than two moons, but when she had not arrived on the intended date, he found himself unnaturally agitated. For the frightening Warsaw wolf, he did not feel it wise to give word without the intention of following through with it. He was selfish and crude; no thoughts were given in the sense that she very well could have been injured or things could have taken a turn for the worst with the lack of prey. He had managed well enough on his own, therefore he had assumed she would as well.
 
When her call struck his ears, the inky titan turned his skull in the direction it originated from and he frowned heavily. He had long since stripped the seaweed from his own body and the wound was healing nicely. It would scar but the thick hair of his pelt would have grown over it.
 
In his pause, the eldest Cairn thought not to arrive to her. He had told the green-eyed woman that he was to teach her how to fish like the wolves of his islands, but had she not told him that she would return sooner? If he were to turn away from his word, he would be doing to her what she had done. As sour as he was, the silver-ribbed feral took off along the beach in a strong sprint. His legs felt the need to be stretched and worked, and when his dark eyes found the white fur of his companion, he scowled.
 
“You are late,” Skellige growled in a guttural tone.

His dark gaze was locked on her face with expectancy. When she returned his sour expression with a beaming smile, he entered a short state of confusion. Was he not aggravated? Did he not look displeased with the idea that she had promised him one day and arrived on another? Still, she carried the conversation onward with a polite apology and explained that her pack housed a wolf who was in greater need than Skellige – hard enough to believe for the self-centered brute – but that she still had intended to return to him.
 
Before allowing him to make a remark on the subject of the other wolf she was tending to, the white-furred woman motioned to the seaweed wrap that still clung to his frame and suggested that they remove it. His eyes remained locked on her face for the longest time before he huffed softly and motioned with his muzzle for them to approach the water.

Once his paws had touched the wet sands, Skellige could feel at peace again. The water lapped at his feet and ankles until he stood in the sea chest-deep. The brine and saline of the water was sharp on his nose and he breathed heavily, happy to be allowed to thrive in his home once more. All the while, the pearly woman made work of the wrappings that she had placed on his neck and shoulder, allowing the ocean to beat softly against the wound and the seaweed over it until the binding fell away and was pulled out into the depths. Once gone, the girl looked to his wound and seemed pleased with the work she had done. A scar but the fur would cover it; either way, it mattered very little to the dark brute.
 
After feeling the sands beneath the pads of his paws and letting the gentle water flow over him, Skellige turned to the woman and furrowed his brows. “You did as you promised,” his voice came as a growl at first, but his gaze softened somewhat. “I will teach you to fish now.” While he was ungenerous, narrow-minded, and oftentimes infuriating to be around, he was not altogether dense. There was something strangely charming about the white wolf and her fresh breath of optimism – a breath he would never share with her.

He saw her ears fall in reaction to the sharp growl that had left his throat and struck the open air with no purpose there. Immediately she seemed to reprimand him for his actions; for speaking in such a tone to someone who had offered him aid. The titan felt his ears lower to his skull and he frowned at her with confusion etched to his dark face. But when a smile danced across her lips after she had spoken to him, he drew his ears forward once more and watched her with his dark, cautious eyes. The feral had never been spoken to in such a way; he was taken aback and surprised by her moxie all the same.
 
When her face became lit at the thought of being taught to fish, she inquired if he was certain that he would be able to teach her. A slow nod followed her question. “Yes. You healed me and I will show you how to keep yourself alive in times of famine,” he answered her. She had kept his life intact and he would not allow her to leave without repaying the favor. In turn, the beastly creature could learn to be something more of a man and less of a savage.
 

The words that fell from her lips were foreign to him. He watched her with blinking, attentive eyes but she did not seem to want to translate. Instead of inquiring, he cast the words aside, wondering what she had meant when she spoke them. She did not seem the type to scorn him in a language he did not understand. But before long, the thought of her unknown words had left his mind and he had turned his attention back to the lapping of the water against his neck and chest. There was a comfort there that could not be explained to one who had not felt it before. The black savage simply belonged.
 
“Fish are fast,” he remarked quietly, turning his gaze to the waters with an intense stare. “They’ll dart from you before you even get your head beneath the surface of the water.” Looking to her expectantly, the titan lifted his brows and without proper instruction, breathed air into his lungs and plunged beneath the water. From underneath, it was clear to him, and he could see the prey as they lazily swam about near the sand underneath the placid sea. Like he had known nothing but water all his life, the dark monster swam forward, kicking his powerful legs in the direction of the fish. In turn, they began to move and dart about. Their sharp fins made them quick in that environment.
 
With a quick snap of his jaws, the silver-ribbed male just missed his intended target. His eyes quickly sought another that haphazardly began to dash towards the surface. Following the movements of the fish, Skellige parted his jaws and clasped tightly to the frantic swimmer, allowing the momentum to carry him back to the surface of the water, fish in jaws. Once he had emerged, his eyes sought the white beauty who had surely remained chest-deep in the sea.
 

The woman seemed to marvel at him once she had caught sight of his large form in the water. His legs pushed him towards her until he could feel the sand dig between his claws and he was able to gain his footing once more. It was natural for the Warsaw wolf to move as he did underneath the lapping waves. His culture was based entirely on that of the sea and the dangers that came from not knowing how to behave in such a frightening expanse of water. He not only had been taught to seek food from underneath the swell, but he had been taught to fight there as well. When he was met with inquiries from the pale woman, he narrowed his brows to her and gestured with his muzzle for her to follow him back to the shore.
 
Once the sand beneath them had faded from clumped and wet to gritty and dry, he dropped the fish there and turned to face the girl. “You will… eat this,” he spoke softly, frowning. It very well could have sounded like a command, but it was his nature to speak in such a way. Flicking the tip of his tail, he returned to the questions she had prompted him with. “The salt burned as a child but I have grown so accustomed to it that it no longer ails me… and we are not the fish down there,” he darted his gaze back to the ocean waters. “We are the sharks.”
 

 
The young woman followed after him as he had led her to the shore and when instructed that she was to eat the fish, she peered at it curiously for a moment, and then him, before she took the food and began to feast upon it. He watched her with expectant eyes; as though she should marvel at the flavor of the fish – the natural salts and the chill of its body – when really she had probably dined on it before.
 
Cleaning the gore from her pale face with a quick flick of her tongue, she made mention that she would be more akin to a fish than a shark. Skellige shook his skull a bit and frowned. “You will learn to be a shark too,” he then told her with a determined bob of his head. His brows were knitted seriously over his dark eyes. The woman then went on to express that she would feel the pain of the water in her eyes if she were to try. This could not be helped. His broad shoulders shrugged a bit at the comment and he frowned softly to the concerned girl. “I have known the ocean as a home for all my life. My eyes are as sharp as any other… even more so under the swell,” he tried to comfort her in the only way he knew how.
 
“Let us not worry about catching a fish. Let us swim first,” he told her. With a kick of his hind legs, the wraith was already bounding back to the lapping water and only for a moment did he pause to turn his head back to the white-furred healer. He did not even know her name.
 

Skellige believed that they could only be sharks. The thought that he would help to train someone beneath the water to become nothing more than another fish was absurd. She was correct in what she was saying, though. Grace and prowess were key beneath the churn of the water. And though he sought the fish only to fuel the fire in his gut, they too were graceful creatures. His mind and his thoughts were very different from the pale woman’s. He had known nothing but predatory nature. From birth, the dark titan had been taught that it was a dangerous world and the only way to see success was to fight for it… every inch of the way.
 
The girl seemed delighted by the jaunt back into the waves. She darted ahead of him somewhat and his dark gaze followed her with a sharp interest. She was still young, but her body was taking an adult shape. Skellige could see how she would grow into a beautiful adult. The thought set fire to the lining of his stomach and he felt his limbs quiver just slightly before he shook his head and moved closer to where she was.
 
Eyes following the sands beneath the water, he was careful enough to make sure they did not travel too far into the waves just yet. When his dark figure was beside her, he turned his head and peered directly into her emerald eyes. “Can you swim above the water?” he inquired. While it may have been a silly question, he truly did not know how much of the ocean had shaped this girl’s life. If she could not swim above, she would be no good underneath.  

The pearly woman had nodded in answer to his question. This was good, he concluded with a shadow of a smile curling his dark lips. His gaze travelled to the waters again and he could feel the familiar tug in his chest as he watched the lapping waters. It pushed and pulled against his body, luring him towards the deeper dangers of her sink. The love that she shared for her forests was strong, and if he were to know about her drawing to the wooded area, perhaps he would have asked about it; to understand the kind of fervor but for something other than the sea. It was – in that moment – completely foreign to him. His children would know the ocean as he did, and so would the pack that he would form. Their bodies would be stronger for it. They would know battle from underneath the waves, as most wolves did not.
 
Swiveling his ears atop his skull, the dark wraith motioned with his muzzle towards the sudden drop that would occur before them. It was an area of the ocean that he favored greatly. There was nothing that could compare to the security of land being ripped from underneath you. “Under the water is different. Similar but not the same,” he spoke almost reverently of the experience. “You will move slower until you learn to use the water to your advantage. You must be aware of the sea at all times. She changes,” he huffed quietly, dark russet eyes following the vast expanse of blue water.
 
“Try to lower your head under and open your eyes to adjust to the salt.”

The pale woman seemed hesitant about the instructions that had been given to her. There was a short pause before the girl lowered her head into the water and Skellige watched her with a strange fascination. When he had been but a boy, they had taken his young body out to the sea and dropped him in, expecting him to sink or swim on his own. He had done what many others had failed to do. The giant wraith did not think that he would find himself in a situation where he would be forced to patiently teach another the rules of the ocean. But there he was…
 
Her head erupted from the water with some surprise and he took a step back as she exclaimed her disliking for the salt that had invaded her vision. He furrowed his brows at the girl as she frantically blinked to remove the water from her green optics. Skellige could recall the female wolf of his pack – Hephzibah – who had been the caretaker for the young Cairn children, and had been the one to soothe them when they had survived the drop.
 
Taking a careful step forward, he found his face quite close to her own. Without warning, the dark creature parted his jaws and carefully slid his coral-colored tongue across the lids of her eyes to force the salt water out. The titan’s fur burned red under his dark coat, but he continued for a moment before pulling away from the girl and peering at her curiously. “It will get better,” he remarked in a gruff voice, his brows still furrowed.

The girl's cold nose found his cheek, and he felt the fur along his neck rise ever so slightly. She lingered there and the great dark wraith could taste a peculiar lump in the back of his throat. He swallowed, breathing a quiet sigh before the pallid woman pulled her head away from him and he caught a glimpse of her bewitching emerald eyes. The Cairn male held his own dark gaze to her curious vision. The words that fell from her mouth were peculiar, causing his dark ears to swivel forward and his head to cant to the left. She trusted him but she did not even know his name. 

With a ghost of a smile, the inky titan watched her pull air into her lungs once more before plunging her head back into the water. She did not retreat immediately this time. With a sudden thought, the Cairn moved his head back toward her rear and without warning, pushed against her body. It would cause alarm, that was certain, but he took the opportunity and lowered himself into the depths of the water. The blue of the sea made him look like a shadow beneath the waves. Bubbles erupted from his nose before they ceased and he sought her gaze once more... bodies suspended in the water, colorful fish darting about. 

The dark brute had been born in times of war. He had been taught to fight since the day his wobbly legs had held him upright. Even the appearance of the inky titan suggested that he was a creature fused with bloodlust and anger. But there was a substantial difference in his nature once he was under the swell. The intensity of his gaze did not soften, but the movements of his limbs became poetry. He was a shadow suspended in the water, eyes locked on the pale woman who had bravely accompanied him into the depths. The green-eyed witch had trusted him. The wraith could not have expressed the emotion that beat in his chest, and so he excused it. Gracefully, the great predator used his limbs to propel himself forward a short distance into the darker parts of the water.
 
The fish darted around their bodies as if they were curious to the two creatures who had invaded their home. His vision followed their movements with a quiet reverence. More bubbles arose from his nostrils and he quickly pushed himself to the surface of the water to swallow the air outside. It did not last long, though; for the moment he had filled his lungs, the titan dove back into the sea and swam deeper. With a curious glance towards his pearl of a companion, he gestured for her to follow.