Axolotl studies the seemingly desultory mountain that rises from the arid plains. His search has taken him far from Meares Island. For a wild moment, the Atlanian considers scaling it, seeing if the years of balancing upon rocks that form a natural pier over the ocean on the left side of Meares Island has honed his balance enough to conquer the impressive mountain before him. The imperial turns his sights away from it moments later for the simple fact that he is coastal born and raised and his place is not atop a mountain but near the sea. Near Atlan. The androgynous deity of the sea names him Atlanian — a warrior shaman in their name. Trained to fight for, to protect, to preserve and to navigate. The ability to read Atlan, to decipher their moods and how to navigate them. It is a knowledge that is intimate and highly revered among those of Nootka Sound. It has been a long time when he was found by Tarnish, a scrappy pup of only six months when he left the Sound but he remembers. He remembers the culture, the religion that has become to irrevocably intwined with him.

Axolotl must travel further to reach the coast, this he knows. The grasses underfoot is dry and it’s taller counterparts tickles against his legs as he moves through it, breaching it’s end upon the bank of a small lake that appears as if it has begun to dry up. A frown pulls at the edges of the leviathan’s lips as the monster of the sea looks down at the water before he bows his head and laps from the water, finding it cool and refreshing; enough to sate his thirst. This terrain is foreign to him and the eagerness to reach the coast near unhinges him. It is a restlessness that coils and sparks within his chest, threatening to combust if he does not soon reach the sea. Axolotl knows he must rest, must eat and keep himself in peak condition regardless of his impatience.

The leviathan recoils back impetuously, ears slicking back against his crown as the water coils violently beneath where his muzzle had been, touching just so upon it’s surface. His drink is broken and thirst only half sated as he looks around, glacial gaze wild before it comes to rest on the intrusion. A male has launched himself into the depths of the drying lake. The ink of the male’s coat is easy to spot against the water where it laps and foams around him and to the Atlanian’s dismay against the bank, slopping his paws slick with fresh mud. The sea shaman’s temperament is as unpredictable and violate as the deity’s that he serves so adamantly and lips curl back from his sharp canines in a snarl of displeasure that ends with a noise that is something akin to a venomous hiss. Muscles beneath his ticked cheeks jump as he clenches his jaw tightly. The leviathan has never been disregarded so ignorantly in his life. Axolotl takes the other male’s presence as he will, not bothering to consider that there is a chance (slim though plausible) that the ebony male simply didn’t notice him. “Do you always treat strangers with such disregard?” The leviathan’s words breach in the silence that is broken only by his low snarl and the disruption of the male’s movements in the water.

Glacial gaze follows the chimera as he rises from the water with his prize — a large mouth bass — as if Axolotl is nothing more than a mere ghost further driving in the nail of annoyance at what the Atlanian perceives to be complete and utter ignorance. Last time the leviathan checked he was fully corporeal. Ticked hackles bristle and upper lip curls back from his teeth once more as the other male finally takes note to him. The warrior shaman draws himself up to his full height watching in satisfaction as the other startles and borders on the line of submission. The leviathan of the seas is not used to be so assertive but then again he’s never had cause to be before. Even in Meares Island where they do not believe in Atlan as wholly (or at all, even) as Nootka Sound does he still garnered respect without asking for it. Axolotl finds himself suddenly in a position where he can demand it and he does.

Assertive or not, as cruel and as commanding as the Sea or not, Axolotl is a shaman and thus is a teacher and the fact that the other male went so long without realizing he was there was little more than troubling. The bass is offered to him as an apology and the leviathan of the seas accept the tribute with indifference only glimpsing down at the kill for a few seconds. “How have you gotten through life so unaware of your surroundings?” The Atlanian breaks his terse silence, truly perplexed by this. Yet, he has seen it with his own eyes and there is no disputing the evidence that he has witnessed. “I had ample opportunities to attack you three times over with you none the wiser until my teeth were sinking into your flesh.” At the end of the day, the male’s incognizance is not Axolotl’s problem but he has been a shaman for most of his life and the impulse to impart some lesson was mere habit these days. “Naïvety towards your surroundings will get you killed.” A lesson that Axolotl himself has learned the hard way though he was not so fortunate enough to have someone offer him such advice. Instead, Atlan had very nearly claimed his life as a young cub. If not for Tarnish Atlan may have never relinquished Their physical hold upon him. Whether or not the male decides to take Axolotl's advice to heart or not ...well that was up to him.

Offering advice upon chiding tongue, it would seem, has garnered the leviathan more than he has asked for as the chimera responds claiming that whom he saw before wasn’t him. Initially, this strikes little more than skepticism within the Atlanian because his eyes are fully functioning and he knows that physically he did not see two different wolves. It was my brother the chimera speaks causing Axolotl’s pupils to narrow in the icy, glacial pools of his irises because the other was confused, as far as the leviathan was concerned. He’d only seen one physical being. The leviathan is no stranger to outlandish tales, though, as a shaman he has heard many and with varying reaches of believability. He has mastered the terse look that does not betray him either way though he listens nevertheless, the cup of his ears forth atop his skull an offer of rapt attention. He speaks of a brother in his head. He has heard of chimeras from the elder Atlanian’s: two beasts merged together within the womb. It is rare, he surmises as the male before him begins to cry, pleading for help that the leviathan is not sure he can offer.

He is not sure Atlan can truly help.

He cannot cure a chimera. They are born as they are and if it is truly two personalities sharing a body that is two in one well, Axolotl thinks there is nothing to cure that but what one brother seeks: death. He grapples for some sort of answer but he has none. This is, admittedly, above the Atlanian’s pay grade as it is not a common problem he has dealt with. “What do you hope I can do?” Axolotl asks because he is uncertain of what the stranger is precisely asking of him. Help is vague and though there is likely some sort of ritual he may be able to conduct with Atlan to offer some sort of aid — or comfort at best — the leviathan cannot change DNA or resulting consequences of genetics.