She had slept like a baby on her first night with the Sunspire wolves, but not even the deepest sleep would deter Viatrix from rising with the sun's first light. It was a trait of her family to rise early, as ingrained in them as inherent wanderlust, to conduct the morning's first patrol. But Viatrix didn't stop when she reached the territory's perimeter, as a regular guardian would have done. She kept on going, and going, and going, until her paws reached the cold sand of the coast she had first set foot on.
Here she walked in remembrance of the barking sea lions and their raucous summer pups. The hunter knew better than to target the sea lions themselves, for their males were bulkier even than an elk and would likely require a force to bring down and the pups were well guarded, but any good tracker knew where that many animals congregated, there was food.
In this case, it was salt water fish on the menu. Viatrix rarely fished, having a strong preference for heartier game, but as she waded into the shallows with the sound of sea lions whooping all around her, she did it with the confidence of a wolf who knew what they were doing.
Life on such an idyllic place such as the island should not have been stressful, but it wasn't every day that the dog woke up surrounded by wolves. Her waking moments were filled with tense strangeness—a sense of alienation that removed her from whatever good graces the beasts may have promised. It had been a few days since she had been rescued (a term that only lightly applied within Ark's mind), and even in her worn out state, she was plotting her escape. It had not occurred to her yet that the pack would be a beneficial place to linger. Sticking around was not an option right now — these were wolves, full blooded and wild, and something within her was repulsed by this.
It was late evening that Arkham took to the sea again. Despite the concussion and her weary body, despite all common sense, she slunk to the edge of the island with darkness all around her, and tried to swim for freedom. The trust the girl had in this pack was limited—yet, as she drifted with the current and realized how truly exhausted she was, she also realized that they had been trying to help her. She paddled in the middle of the ocean, suddenly undecided and growing fearful of her fate. The ocean carried her as she struggled; she was deposited upon a patch of beach that, at first glance, looked like the island's edge.
It was here that she rested until morning. Arkham expected that Majesty or one of his cronies would be looking for her by now, and was convinced that they would find her here on the beach, since their patrols often roamed along it's surface. She didn't realize that this was a different beach—nor that she had found a certain level of freedom. Ark braced her front end as she got up, having been laying on her side in the wet sand, and proceeded to shake as much of the particulate and salt from her coat as she could. Even that was too much, for it brought a wave of dizziness to her and forced her to sit still.