Stavanger Bay [m] the sparrows drag me down

Seaspray was a quiet comfort as he neared the place where everything had gone so right, and then so wrong. He couldn't see it yet. Not through the dense woodland that lay between him and the low plateau that had once sheltered his family. He thought of his seal hunter anyway, a quiet pang lancing him through, as always, though the abscess had long since been drained.

He stood there a long moment, the cold surf washing over his sandy paws while he gazed off into the middle distance. He needed to visit Moonglow, he knew, to see if they had any word of his son. To see if they had any word of anyone — but he could not yet allow himself to hope, and so there was not yet any reward in seeking that place out.

For all he knew, even Valiant might be gone from it.

Dutch lingered on the briny shoreline, eventually turning his attention to the bubbling sand. His movements rote and thoughtless, he began to dig for clams.

It was westward she'd meant to take herself. Back to the place where she knew the memories stood in tangible form, the abandoned lodges and long-discarded bits of bones and pelts that told a story she'd once been able to recite by heart. Part of that story had been her own.

But Marina didn't think she could lay claim to it anymore. Maybe that was why her paws led her eastbound, tracing the coastline down to the bay. A ground-level nest along the way provided an easy snack for the journey; she was still chewing eggshells when she spotted the figure digging through the sands. At first glance she didn't recognize the wolf. Just another stranger, another soul wandering in solitude on the beach. Marina flicked an ear, but didn't call out. The days when she'd called to strangers were long behind her.

He was focused enough on his task that he did not notice the other wolf, at first. The rote action of digging for clams, and then cracking them with his molars, absorbed enough of his senses that he might have missed her entirely if the wind had not shifted. Even then, if she had really been nothing more than a passing stranger, he might have kept his head down.

But she would not. He'd know her scent anywhere, no matter how clean it was of all the things that had once meant home to him. He'd known it deep and true — remembered with frightening clarity the way her scruff had tasted held loosely, tenderly between his teeth.

He blinked, and then his head snapped up to look in her direction. His heart lurched, and he called out in a hoarse and cracking voice —

"Marina."

A bark, almost. A burst of noise from a throat tight with disuse. The sight of her stirred something in his chest, and somewhere deeper. Somehow, however, it was cloying fear at the surface of his emotions. He took an unsteady step in her direction, then hesitated where he stood.

The world rewrote itself in those three syllables, the sound of her name in a voice she had heard only in dreams for too long. Who was he? Perhaps more importantly — who was she, in his eyes?

Oh, she remembered the dreams. She remembered the lodge by the sea, the night he'd wrapped himself around her and spoke of the stars. The days of longing and loneliness, the mornings when she woke and thought not of her lost husband or the children they'd raised together but of him. Or rather, what he'd represented to her; the path not taken, the sweet ache of 'what if' when the reality of what is only hurt.

Time had stretched out long and thin between them, something like a razor's edge now. Still he was no more familiar to her now than he had ever been in her memory; still he was just a man who had not chosen her, a man whose heart she'd never truly held. What could she say to that? That she'd thought of him, cried for him, longed for him? That she didn't anymore? That, for all the waiting and the thinking and the wanting, she still didn't really know him?

Yet she wanted him even now. That part had never changed. And now here he stood, nothing between them but sand and sea and her name on his tongue. They're all gone now, aren't they? She murmured half to herself, drifting a few steps closer. Her voice lifted with her next words to carry across the space between them. I never thought I'd find you alone.

Do you still hear them? Marina wondered, softer now. Another step closer. The stars. Singing. Is it still real? Was it ever?

He'd thought her dead. Gone the same way as his seal hunter. As his wife. As his father. In his wildest dreams, there were many he thought he might one day see again — but her, Marina, he had truly thought lost to him.

His eyes drank her in, disbelieving and hungry, shaded by renewed grief and a rising miasma of hope. If she was alive —

But there were no familiar scents on her pelt. Only her, small and alone.

The question, then, felt quite galling. No, he thought. I thought they were. But you're still here. Even if she was not the one that he wished most ardently to see, she was still a scrap of home. She was still a bright spark of something warm and lovely, despite her coldness, despite the distance she held between them. He stepped closer, hoping to thaw the numbness from his lips.

"They weep," he said to her, his voice low. "It is a cold comfort."

He did not know what else to say. His eyes raced over her, retracing old paths with quiet desperation. His heart pounded in his chest.

Her own eyes welled with burning salt, a foreign feeling to her now. Marina scarcely wept anymore, and she would not weep now. But the heat filled her eyes nonetheless, leaving her to blink the wetness away even as she dared another shaky step closer. She had been alone for so long, too long.

I thought of you, she confessed breathlessly, closing the distance slowly, so slowly. When I had nothing. When I didn't know who I was, or where I had come from. When the sea had taken everything from me... you were still there, still in my dreams.

And now you're here, and I don't know what comes next. The distance between them had dwindled to a mere few feet, her dark eyes never leaving him. Her breath caught in her throat.

He held his breath when she stepped closer to him, resisting the kneejerk urging to turn away, to protect himself. If she touched him, if she was real, if he lost her again —

A long, juddering breath clouded the air between them. His head dipped, ears flying back in a show of brief apology. Her tone, her confession... He knew he'd always loved her more than he ought to, at least from a certain point of view.

It was her loss that had broken him. He ought to have stayed, for their children if not for the pack itself. He'd welcomed them all along, but no seal hunters had elected to leave the sea behind. To leave the last place they'd seen their mothers and their father. Dutch had not been enough for them, then — but perhaps he might have been, if he'd stayed.

"I thought you were dead," he told her. It was a hollow excuse. "If I'd known, I would have stayed. I would have — "

He swallowed down on old heartaches.

"I poured myself into you," he told her, his voice growing so hoarse it was almost a whisper. "That night. Under the stars. We were one. The rest of us have gone — but we are still one."

It was what his seal hunter would have wanted, he knew. Dutch had failed Marina, and Chakliux through her. Now that he knew better, he would honor those scared ties.

And...

A ragged breath escaped him.

"You're alive," he murmured, still drinking her in with scorching, hungry eyes. He took the final step toward her.

But we are still one. Her breath caught again, this time with a new flavor of fear. All that longing, all those lonely days — but was this what she deserved? Was this what she wanted? This was no salvation, no; more like a mouth full of teeth asking her throat to bare itself.

You're alive — and the air left her lungs all at once, and her eyes drifted shut as his warmth filled the empty space. Dutch. That was his name. I'm alive, she echoed breathlessly. She pushed her forehead against the fluff of his cheek fur, breathed in his scent. And you are, too. So stay.

I have a den... Marina trailed off, her breath hitching again as the reality of it settled into the raw corners of her aching chest. In the burned forest, she might have finished, but she realized abruptly that it hardly mattered. None of it mattered but that he stayed.

Whether she bared throat or not — his teeth had sunk in. Marina's options, then, were to submit to this fate, or to fight to free herself.

And it was Dutch's salvation that she would tear from his jaws. He knew it even now, and there was a sharp edge to his gaze until they finally touched. Whether it fade or not was unknown; his eyes slid shut as her warmth suffused him, as her scent enveloped him the way it had that night. Only, things were different, now. There was no greater web of connections for him to fall deeper in love with. There was only her, and him, and the fleeting promise of their heartbeats.

They were alive. They had found each other. What else was there?

"Show me," he said, though he showed signs of wanting to linger here. He pressed his nose into her scruff, drawing deeper breaths, as if just breaking for air after a dive.

Marina remembered what it felt like to drown. Some nights she still woke herself choking on the phantom burn of salt filling her lungs, the way it sharpened to a lance through her chest. It hurt like nothing else, like nothing but this. She took in a tremulous breath. The air was frigid and sweet in her throat. She was alive, and Dutch was hers. He'd chosen her.

But only when there was nothing else left. Only after all the hurt and the longing had cooled to bitterness, then apathy, and now — now what?

This is what you wanted. Wasn't it? She pressed closer, hesitating for long seconds stretching into minutes. The warmth of him softened the thorns from her racing thoughts. Dizzied and disoriented with the feeling, she wobbled on her feet a little. It'd been so long since she'd let herself be held.

Eventually, reluctantly, she shifted to murmur, This way. Her steps regained their steadiness after a few uncertain paces, and she looked back to meet his eyes. To be sure he would follow.

This closeness was strange and new to him as well. It had only been a season, perhaps, since he'd last held one of his children, but he'd been numb to their warmth at the time. He did not know if he would feel it even now, but he could feel Marina. Her scent injected him with purpose, and though he felt quite off-kilter, his steps were sure as he followed after her, looming always no further than her hip.

She led him toward the sentinel forest, which had been underrun with black scars long before he'd first set eyes on it. Now moss and detritus covered these open wounds, less and less like scabs as ferns and other epiphytes took root. It reminded him of Blackmouth Bay, though the woods were far taller and denser, here.

"Is this were you want to stay?" he asked her without much inflection. There was a compass spinning in his head, the Plateau its unerring North. He was not sure he wanted to see it — but it would be more or less inevitable, if they stayed here.

The ruined forest was still and silent, a stark contrast to the liveliness of the bay. It suited her most days. Marina found herself casting a newly critical eye over the burned trees, the thin veneer of delicate verdure hiding dark damp soil. Self-conscious, perhaps, of her own choice now that there were new eyes to see it. She glanced at Dutch when he spoke.

Sometimes the Sound still calls to me, she confessed softly. Where I whelped my last litter. Marina would not speak of their violent conception, she decided then — but she would speak of the decisions she'd made in the aftermath. The reality she'd been forced to live. North of here. But I think I could be content anywhere by the sea.

And you? Her dark eyes softened as they lingered on the aching familiarity of his features. Each moment was a reluctant thawing of the ice she'd formed around herself. She didn't want it, not really — but neither could she fathom taking any other path.

That knocked all the air from his lungs. He realized all over that it'd been a year or more since they'd last seen one another. The intervening months were a blur of pain and desolation, and he did not yet know exactly how poorly they'd treated her.

"I am angrier with the sea than with the stars," he admitted, self-conscious about the sound of his own voice. He had the feeling he'd once spoken prettily, but it sounded strangely flat to his ears, now. He felt that he was not the man that had once charmed Marina — but perhaps he could be again. Someday.

He would try.

"But I will go where you go," he told her, "and I will stay where you stay."

He touched his nose to her hip, begging her silently to stop.

"What — " He shook his head, unable to articulate all that he wanted to know. He had so many questions, but not one of them was brought easily to the forefront of his mind. He had to grasp madly at the incessant swirl of his thoughts. The first one he produced was, "What happened to them?"

Her last litter, he meant. It galled him that they had not been born to Chakliux, nor to him. He was not angry with Marina over it, but he was jealous over their parentage all the same. They were likely grown or dead by now, if they were not here with her, and that was her triumph or tragedy to bear — but selfishly, he wished they were here for him to claim.

He shifted, discontent. The whelping season would soon be upon them, and the time to rectify this unease along with it.

"I saw Chagak," he told her then. "Before the first snow. North of here — far, far north. He... he was well."

Her mouth tensed slightly with remembered pain when Dutch asked after the fate of her last litter. Angrier with the sea, he'd said, and maybe Marina could relate to that in some ways. They're gone, she said quietly, the words acrid on her tongue. I... I didn't want them. But I raised them. I loved them. Until I got sick, and then... I don't remember.

My brother found me. River. He saved me, Marina reached out to touch her nose to Dutch's cheek. The sea has taken so much from us. But it gave me my life back, too. I have family by the sea, more family than I ever knew.

But when he spoke of Chagak, her eyes filled with tears. Chagak, she breathed, voice hitching on the word. He was well. I hope he found them, or they found him. She turned abruptly to press against Dutch, desperately seeking his embrace all over again. He was the only piece left of the life she'd tried so hard to build from the ruins of her youth.

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Gone.

Dutch felt a muted sense of grief, and then just as quickly, stepped past it. They were gone. Gone, he was familiar with. Gone made more sense than Marina being here.

She was right, though. The sea had taken much, but it had given her back to him. He just had to be careful not to let himself wish for more.

"I will stay where you stay," he reiterated, not keen on trying to force her from the coast even if she'd had only a lukewarm appreciation for it. The sea had taken much, but if she wanted it, it was hers. Dutch did not want to take anything more from her.

He drew her gratefully into him, preening along the back of her neck. He had more questions for her, but once again, he struggled to pluck even one from the clamoring in his head. The scent and feel of her quieted those voices, and he sought the physical affirmation of their togetherness.

"Let me make love to you," he begged her.

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A shudder ran through her at Dutch's plea, involuntary, wracking her small frame for a moment. I... Marina's breath hitched, but she didn't pull away. Instead she leaned closer, burying her face in his fur as if the scent of him could drive away the painful memory of the last time a man had been atop her. Just - go slowly, please.

Her trembling resurfaced, softening and then intensifying by turns. She wanted this, she did, — but it wasn't so easy as that. Not anymore. She was no longer the woman who had once seduced Dutch in the lodge by the sea.

But she would try to be, for him.

In another life, this small hesitation might have been enough to stop him. In this life, the pause it gave him was shamefully brief. He understood what I didn't want them must mean, but she did want him. Of course she had. She had to.

Still. Perhaps she wasn't ready. This was all so very sudden. They were in the middle of nowhere.

"Slowly," he agreed, pushing such thoughts away. He drew her carefully against his chest, lapping tenderly at the fur of her throat, her shoulder. The feel of her beneath him was a balm against the wound her words had carved. Strange men, bastard children — the need to reclaim her from these things burned inside him. But, as he covered her with his body and hid her beneath him, he decided that this could slake his thirst for her.

For now.

"I can wait," he told her, just a little breathless. Then, "I'm sorry," and again, "I can wait."

Slowly, he assured her, and she felt his mouth against her skin, his warmth suffusing her, his weight over her, she felt — trapped. Marina shuddered again, breath catching and breaking into something like a sob. She tried to form the words, tried to say not yet, please, I just need to breathe. She couldn't.

She didn't need to, in the end. Another tremulous sob spilled from her, blending with his words; she scarcely heard them over her own heartbeat, but she felt them. She arched against him, head falling back to press into his chest, and told herself that she was safe here. Safer, at least. Dutch would never hurt her — not even if she tried to let him.

As much as his actions shamed him, he treasured the feeling of her crying in his arms. He'd been the one to scare her, this time, but he would still be the one to comfort her. He hushed her, murmuring another apology, another reassurance, another sweet, quiet nothing.

It meant everything to hold her again. Perhaps to hold anyone again — but there had always been something special about Marina.

"I will protect you now," he promised, repentant even as he reveled in their closeness. "I'll take care of you. I will keep you safe."

Feel free to fade here if you'd like. I can also keep going if that makes more sense.