Seaside Moors Storms cause our flowers to bloom

It had been far too long since Rosalyn had gone for a swim in the ocean's waters, and that was where she headed now, cutting her way through the southern moor in an arrow straight for the shoreline.  As fall encroached the weather took on a chill, and while the sun lasted, she knew the novelty would remain.  Soon the shore would become a much different place.  

She'd taken time to think on her conversation with Erzulie, but had come up with no answers yet of her own.  There was perhaps one, if she was honest with herself, but the taste to pursue it was idle and withdrawn.  A fancy, nothing more.  

It was hard to believe that so long ago she'd have joined a pack with the sole purpose of one day owning them... as she had with Caiaphas upon their first meeting.  What had that pack been called?  Vlad had dubbed it... but she found, as she thought, the name escaped her.  Years, and a lot of life, had occurred between then and now.

She slowed to a gentle loping pace and stretched her neck, feeling the tension that had built up release some with the motion.  A swim would do her a world of good, she imagined.

It's a beautiful morning, pale blue sky with gauzy pink clouds. The shoreline slick with low tide reflects light, so that he walks not on solid ground but on long strips of cotton candy, industrial sugar, rosy Turkish delight. Beneath him, heather and peat is pox-scarred with the memories of so many other peoples' footprints. 

A dark figure walks to the shore in a path perpendicular to his. A Rusalkan, he muses, another true-blue sailor. He picks up his pace to meet her. You'd think the water would be cold by now. Here, the sand was wet and packed close under its own weight. With each incoming wave, new seashells are revealed and footprints are filled up -- he observes that the moor retains memory much better than the ocean in this way. It really hangs onto the warmth.

He turns to her, the sun lights him from the back, outlining him. He is incandescent. I'm Miranda. Erzulie let me in.

A second joiner from Erzulie.  Another male, though this one lighter, shorter, and with a different air.  He opened with more words than Wintersbane seemed to hold in his entirety.  It was odd to meet another Rusalkan on the shore; sometimes it felt as though the ocean was dying from them, despite living only a territory away.  

Rosalyn. she introduced herself, taking note of him with appraising amusement.  His words were small talk, but something about him belied that.  There isn't much the waves let go of easily, not when they want to keep it.  Here for a swim as well?  The question was just that, but the first was an intended warning.  Some would fear the water.  Do you?

Wait wait wait -- Let me guess. The pirate wife? His teeth twinkle with the same mirth that shines through his eyes. He enjoys the hidden threat behind her words. Miranda fancied himself somewhat of an authority on wordplay. A wanton lady, the ocean is!

Both Erzulie and Rosalyn looked very much at home along the coast -- they lived in Rusalka as much as Rusalka lived in them and their seamlessness was soothing as if an invisible hand was scratching the back of his head at an itch he couldn't quite reach, maybe it was envy, maybe it was respect, or a classic appreciation for anybody that knew what to sow and what to reap. After you, he says, his voice textured by the grit of self-deprecation, steeped in modesty.

Manners.  Or trepidation.  Rosalyn couldn't tell which, but she appreciated his upfront humor and easy pattern of speech.  It was clear he was a friendly soul, and if that veneer hid depths, they weren't waters she sought to submerge in.  Frankly, she cared little of his motives so long as Rusalka thrived.

She's wise enough to know a kindred soul, Rosalyn answered with a quirk of her brow, a quick smile, and then an acceptance of his gesture.  

She stepped into the water and walked forward, allowing the waves to pull at her legs as she appreciated the chill of her touch.  She waded to her haunches, then submerged, casting her head beneath and the lifting it with an arcing shake of spray.  She laughed as one pushed her sideways, then spun, flicking her tail towards him in invitation.

Miranda’s friendliness was no veneer -- he’d always figured that everyone would die at some point, fading off into vast and cold oblivion, so why the hell would he spend the time being an asshole?

It was the only doctrine he would ever follow. Though not unique, he was proud that it was handmade.

Were you drawn to the water, then, or was the water drawn to you? He shoots back, half-joking and half-rhetorical. The Rusalkans so far had proved to be wonderful at rapport and he often felt as if he had lived here and known the people here all his life, or maybe in a past life, whether it was due to their West Teekonian charms or their home which was equal parts balmy and foreboding.

The water is lukewarm and briny but he suppresses a shiver as it touches his legs, then his chest, then his neck. A wave laps at his face and he narrowly dodges the incoming mouthful of salt. It doesn’t want for him to stay on his feet -- he’s on tippy toes, swaying back and forth, nowhere near as comfortable as Rosalyn -- but he laughs, anyway.

Ah, history.  There was a time Rosalyn would have balked to share, but she'd found as she aged that her walls were cracking.  If a wolf was to judge her, she'd rather they know her, because then at least she'd have done what she could.  To leave space was to give weight to assumptions and her patience for such things, when it came to family, was low.  Miranda was to be family now.

She chose me, but I embraced her.  Rosalyn answered, allowing the tide to push her a bit closer to shore, and then digging her paws into the soft sand beneath the depths.  I was born on the coast and have lived there all my life.  I suppose I've just never considered an alternative.  She was a Pirate, and pirates did not dwell on land.

Now I have given that love to my family, and they will likely do the same to theirs.  She added, clearly satisfied with this outcome.  How did she draw you in?  This was a fun play on words, in a way... it could be the sea, but she knew that this one was a recruit of Erzulie. Perhaps her wife had convinced him, or perhaps he had needed none.

Either bemused or not wanting to get saltwater in his eyes, Miranda's face is pulled into an affable grin as he follows the pirate-wife's lead, letting the tide bring him back to shallower water. Silt clouds the water where he stands.

Coast-born and coast-bred, much like Knaven. He imagines a lifetime of waking up to the corrugations of beach sand and drifting asleep next to the capricious push-pull of the ocean. If this was the life he'd chosen to lead, he might as well learn to love it. 

So he smiles when Rosalyn mentions love, dimly surprised (Could she read my mind?) and delighted by her bit of wordplay. He'd never get enough of that. 

I'll be honest, I'm a bit of a romantic, he starts off, his eyes glinting, I thought that this place was just pretty as hell. Y'know, wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life just lookin at it. 

But after learning more about you, and Erzulie and all ... I respect it. I wanna protect it.

He could've never said this about Brooks Range. It really did take a lot of effort to love a place that was hellbent on running you out of it. 

You can throw up now. Cheesiest goddamn thing I've ever said.

It was the perfect answer in her ears. For a long time Rusalka has been full of wolves who seemed to simply have no where else to go; hearing that he had an investment their little side of the pack was beyond what she'd expected.

It's only cheesy if you give a damn what anyone else thinks.  Thankfully I'm too old for that.  It was rare for her to make jokes about her age, but as time went, she knew she was changing.  The old her would have dug at his sentimentality.

Most I run into up here aren't born to the coast.  Where are you from?  She could at least invite him to share in return, and expected from his last statement he might even be honest with her.

Really? He laughs and the force of it tilts his head back. You don't seem all that old to me ...! His eyes brim then overflow with amusement -- its streaming out of his mouth, ears, nose, a vital lightness that softens his wind beaten man-from-the-mountain face. Mhm. That obvious?

Gesturing somewhere vaguely, where he hopes is magnetic north. I'm from the mountains. A vicious little place called Alaska. So goddamn cold all the time... Gauze falls over his face and eyes, a brief moment of recollection and nostalgia, but the ocean doesn't allow for such lack of vigilance, and he almost falls over into the water for what seems to be the fiftieth time. 

He regains his composure. Don't even ask him to count how many times he's had to do that.

I did some work for people up there. My bosses were a little strange, to put it very nicely. He'd tried to describe the Gray Brothers, the Brothers Gray, many, many times, but when it came to actually telling someone, the words left his mind without so much a single forensic hair follicle or fingerprint left over. 

Left just before things went to shit, or so I've heard. Lucky me, right?

He fit the ocean in demeanor.  The sea drew an open and carefree crowd, but it also harshened most who lived there.  He held a smoothness that was ill suited to the windswept sands.  Alaska.  Sounds awful, she interjected when he spoke of the cold.  She'd never made her way north and likely never would.  Rosalyn didn't care what Miranda said, her bones were far too old to manage something she even avoided in her prime.

I hope our brand of strange suits you better, then.  He was lucky.  Leaving before was far better than being tossed out with the shit; she could say that with certainty.  How are you with children?  It was a random shift, but the pack he spoke of did not sound familial, and she wondered if he was as hopeless as she had been for so long.  They had a growing brood and it would be nice for Valravyn to have someone more than Aningan to look to.

Miranda looks her up and down. Sinew wrought like ironwork, her fur thin and sun-bleached, a veritable coastal wolf. As hardy as she was, he found it difficult to imagine her scaling steep, iced-over inclines under a garish winter blue sky, so high up you could walk in clouds. 

Did he miss his near-inhospitable Alaskan peaks? Yes, but he suspected some sort of Stockholm syndrome came into play there.

His brows raise at her next question. I'd like to think so, he ventures, clicking his tongue. I'd like to have kids one day. Be a dad, settle down.

Jacobi would call Miranda a homebody for that, a slave to the domestic lifestyle. Husband, wife, beautiful nuclear family with jobs in real estate. In truth, Miranda was an ardent lover of routine. Stick him in Armageddon, he would still find out a way to get up every day, to clean his teeth, to comb his fur. Call it a caricature of normalcy, however oxymoronic that is. It was a comfort for him.

She smiled and was obviously pleased with that answer.  My wife and I... we have a number of them.  And unfortunately, it seems that the men who sire them have a habit of disappearing.  A touch of ice at that.  She'd thought perhaps Rosencrantz would prove different from Firefly, but in the end, he too had held little merit.  Gone as soon as the deed was done, no desire to support the pack and life he'd spawned.  Only Aningan remained.

Valravn could use an example.  She added, softening.  As Reyes could have, she thought silently, growing bitter with the thought of it.  If you have an interest.

His face darkens though he is unsure of what to say, so he remains in a silence which he hopes will be construed as tactful and not heartless. 

Of course. Valravn, huh? He's quieter now, the affable humor replaced by some sleight-of-hand pensiveness that has him looking off to a faraway point pinned someone along the choppy horizon. Of course, he repeats. 

Around them still throbs the ocean in all its weary blues. A fleet of gulls in chevron formation fly out to sea in the overhead murky turbulence and he cranes his neck back to look at them as they disappear into pinpoints and then nothing. Back to Rosalyn, So how's the kid like?

Of course.  She didn't acknowledge it, but she knew he would either do it or he would not.  Still... the first time, she'd been against it.  The second time, ambivalent.  Perhaps, if they were to have someone to look to, she'd need to instead seek it.  It was worth the try; it was not like it could do any harm.

She gazed out for a moment too, buffeted by the gentle pull of the waves.  It was beginning to chill in the water, but she wasn't ready to leave quiet yet.  He's unlike most of us, she finally said, with a small smile.  He's cheerful.  I think he could find joy in a rock, so long as nothing better was nearby.  There was a touch of laughter to the words, and a soft affection that was rarely directed at anything else.  I'd like to see him keep that. As much as he can.  

After a small pause, she realized the distance, and remembered who she was speaking to.  A mother can hope, she finished, with a small wry smile.

WC: 179

We can fade here if you want :D Thanks for the thread!

He watches the guarded lines of Rosalyn's face melt and fold into a wistful smile. Sounds like a good lad. Meanwhile, he's thinking about childhood and childishness and the lack thereof. He thinks that there's nearly nothing sadder than a kid whose chance at innocence has been ripped away from them. It leaves a crater, a pockmark, a dark room where a chiffoneur has been standing for decades but now is gone, leaving the imprints of pad feet behind on the floor.

You know the poem -- for sale: baby shoes, never worn. 

She sure can hope, he says, dragging out the u in a slack embouchure, before turning to add, I'll do my best.

sounds great, thank you!  I love him lots <3

Aye, she agreed.  Then, after a moment's silence, she made her way out onto the sand.  Shaking water from her pelt, she laid down to allow the sun to do the rest of the work for her.  She'd continue to converse with him as long as he would let her, asking him what sorts of lessons he might impart, what kind of hidden skills he might have.  She wouldn't pry if he seemed to shy from answering, but she always took more of a shine to men of his friendly caliber than others who seemed to shut the rest of the world out.  The thought crossed her mind that she might have made him a father that upcoming spring, should he still be around, but it was easy enough to dismiss.  She knew at an instinctual level her time had come and gone.  Finally, at length, she would dismiss herself.

WC: 150