Dragoncrest Cliffs we are still trained killers

half-drowned and hungry, the saint comes to their doorstep, looking like a begger. bonethin, tearyeyed and sunkencheeked.

she has heard the sirensong and they rejected her; spitting her back into the flotsam and jetsam of the sound.

her raspy voice calls for anyone. anyone close enough to hear it.

sea wet fur clings to her thin frame; swaying before she sits, without the energy to keep herself standing.

her fault.

her fault for not being enough for the unnamed god, nor for the sirens that haunted the seas of ankyra sound.

@Chacal @Mireille @Val

oh, you poor thing.
he comes across the raspy-voiced girl
looking more like a sodden corpse
than a living thing --
her eyes sunken in a thin skull
her fur greasy with saltwater.

she can barely stand.
is she one of them,
returned from a sojourn gone awry?
cayetano looks her over, biting his lip.

val and a few others were gone,
and from the looks of things,
this one would be a different kind of gone
very soon.

he calls for chacal and mireille,
while he reaches for her
with one shoulder held up
for her to lean upon.

sapphique was suddenly — quieter.
with the young girls gone on excursion, and val accompanying suzu and thibault on assignment to see what was happening around etienne, the seacoast pack was almost watchful, as if waiting for the return of others.
leaving the children in the care of a watchful arm, mireille joined cayetano upon the beachfront, frowning at the rawboned child straggled with seawater and strictured by starvation.
there was no discussion of it; "come," the obsidian murmured to them both, hovering to the girl's other side as motherly cleansings began to comb salt and debris from the wringing-wet fur. "we will take her to de roja den."

the saint shivers as the stranger from within the borders approaches.

if she is startled by the way in which he and the red furred woman who comes not soon after each take a shoulder and guide her within their borders, there is no room to show it. no room to really feel it. even as everything in her wants to push away from the help.

want to be strong enough to do it on her own.

but she is not.

a soft sniffle leaves her — of sorrow at her own continued failures, at the stinging rejection of the sirens of the sea — as she walks between the two, too weak to even ask what a 'roja den' was.

sapphique’s matron comes down from the cliffs,
takes one look at the sodden wretch
and extends the full magnitude of
feminine generosity; a sweep of her tongue 
and she directs child and lost son
to the eaves of the roja den. 
he’s quiet as he offers his shoulder 
foisting the sniffling girl
towards her new destiny
  where hopefully 
she’d be a little less wet. 

@Chacal would be close, in bluepeace, mireille suspected. she sent up a howl to inform her sister of the current happenings, then curled the thin girl close. "cayetano, please bring her somet'in to eat. small bites, cheri," she cautioned the little one. "your stomach will need to settle."
and she would need to return to her children, but for now the small den would be enough to warm and protect. 
"how long were you on de sea?"

the saint is skittish, feeling the desire to shy away from the touch; overwhelmed. her time knowing compassion was short — too short for her to really remember — but she is too weak to protest. physically or otherwise.

the man is sent away to find food and her stomach both rumbles with want and roils uncomfortably with protest.

de sea.

she is reminded again of the rejection of the sirens, of the rejection of the nameless, of the voices she had once known intimately.

eet — vas — hiccup. not long. broken words between broken sniffles that threaten to become quiet sobs again.

Chacal sighed softly and stretched as she rose, her belly sagging and pulling on the arch of her lower back. As if disturbed from their slumber, the children in her belly stirred and pressed their paws against their vessel. Soon enough, she thought- and they would be out.

She moved to the Roja den where Mireille had called from. Had she sensed more peril, she might have hastened her step, but her joints ached enough as it was.

When she arrived, she spotted the still-damp youngster- perhaps Chani and Chiro’s age- visibly blinded in one eye and exhausted. She could sense the young woman’s skittishness, see it in the whites of her tired eyes.

She moved forward with a calm step, and gave her sister’s cheek a nuzzle so the young one would know she had come to the keep of caring wolves. ”Who be dis one?” She chimed in a quiet, singsong voice.

he’s sent off on a small errand;
fetch a meal for the starveling.
he had the good sense to nod,
and in silence leave
for the rounding figurine of the cache
where meat was stored in
earth’s dark and gravid belly.

he passes chacal
equally as borne down by the weight in her belly
and returns with a half eaten fish
its scales clouded with dirt

he clears his throat and leaves it
giving the sea-mothers their space
as a new child is welcomed to their fold.

"she hasnae spoke much at all," mireille informed her sister. "just washed up on de beach."
cayetano was given a soft look and the girl a nudge. "you have been t'rough a lot, but donnae worry. you be safe now."
sapphique made itself such a place.

though saint is grateful for the half eaten fish the man brings her, her stomach roils a bit at it as she sniffs at it. she remembered the one woman's warning: to eat it slow and she does not think that will be much of an issue. she takes a small bite and sloe-eyed looks between the two women.

tongue coated in sand and tasting the dirt on the scales as she takes another small bite of the meal she has to force herself to swallow it.

safe.

not a word she'd really known since sweetharbor so many moons ago now.

s-saint. am called saint.