Ankyra Sound one gonna run me down, a hail of bullets in my wake

@Wylla

ingram trotted along the compact portion of the swash, the footprints left in his wake slowly filling with coruscating pools of seawater. the wind was quieter today, and the weather more temperate than it had been in weeks. he appeared alone on the beach and he enjoyed the solitude, though he still worried for lycaon. the two had not reconciled since the male had stormily exited the grotto.

ingram had made it a point to avoid the grotto since then, as lycaon's words had whipped him and the memory still stung. smoothly the adolescent shifted into a smooth run, enjoying the gentle breeze and the bright sun on his pelt as he cantered down the shore's divide.

Why don't you feel anything? Wylla wondered to herself as she strode slowly along the waterfront, idly memorizing the shapes of several islands clustered off the coast. Being home again ought to have evoked stronger feelings in her, but she felt indifferent. She had no meaningful memories of the place. She'd been too young to even leave the underground when Lusca spirited her and Ingram away, but she remembered the blue light of the grotto and the recalled blue light of the ocean as her mother whisked past it. These things weren't enough to stir her to emotion.

Her lips drew down thoughtfully and she turned away from the churning sea in time to see a dark figure cutting across the beach in her general direction. The yearling dipped her dark head down, intent on avoiding company for the time being whilst watching the oncoming wolf from the corner of one eye; only when he got closer did she lift her head, stutter step, and call out an uncertain, "Ingram?"

She didn't dare get her hopes up about it—just because one was here and said the other was here didn't make it so, for Raptor had been pretty damn certain of himself too—but her tail betrayed her and stirred into a premature wave.

ingram's smooth strides slowed as he saw another wolf along the sand's horizon. at first the distance contorted her features, all the same as he drew closer his heart slowly rose to his throat. they may have been separated the last several months, but ingram knew that figure: it bid of lusca, all slender limb and sharp features.

his stride opened again and he rushed to close the gap between them, his eyes bright with excitement and a joyful wag to his tail. this moment had been too long -- all those hours in the dark, all the sad exchanges with strangers -- they were finally over. "wylla!" he shouted, rushing to her flank with joyous hops. would she allow it he would bury his muzzle deep into her cheek and assault her muzzle with frenzied and adoring licks.

There was a part of her that believed she was mistaken even when the figure's heels kicked up and it came barreling toward her. Part of her had become so used to her own solitude and so accepting of her inability to appeal to a pack that she believed he was coming to attack her and not to greet her. This place smelled strongly of others, after all, and even though she knew this was home and she was welcome here, she worried anyway. Her ears pressed back and her body shrunk in on itself in anticipation, but then Ingram called out her name and her figure unfolded, and then she jolted into a run as well.

"Ingram!" She laughed—it had been way too long. She regretted not spending more time trying to find her way back to Keokuk Glade, though it was for the best; she wouldn't have found him there. His assault on her face came stronger than her thin, bone-tired body could handle and she toppled over into the sand, a mass of flailing limbs and wriggling tail and frantically searching tongue as she reunited with her sibling with soft whines.

omg so cute

as wylla toppled over ingram fell with her, climbing excitedly over her flailing limbs with a wildly beating tail. he thoroughly doused her countenance in wet and sloppy licks, unable to keep his squirming body still. "wyll, i missed you." he breathed, calming down only enough to briefly look in her eyes with sincerity -- now that the three were reunited, nothing could possibly get in their way. they had it all; each other, that crazy old barnacle hermit in the cave, a very imposing skeleton guardian, and most of all -- a home.

he pulled back for a moment and smiled - there was so much to say - so much to fill her in on. "i found lycaon! he's here." he beamed, his tail now wildly out of control and causing small ridges in the sand to form. "and lycaon's mana is here, with her big friend, and a wolf that's almost our age - he's really nice." ingram only dove up for air once before continuing: "and we've been settling here - there's a bunch of us now - enough for a pack even. there's nyx, you'll really like her - she's just as witty as lyc. there's also chusi! i hope you like her - she's so pretty and knows everything about the packs around here." he stopped, rising to his feet with a deft leap. "where have you been?! what have you been up to?"

Je Sus Christ.

Wylla had never known Ingram to be quite so excitable, mostly because back home—that other home—they'd been together a lot so there was no need of it. Wylla's excitement was quick to simmer and she ended up trying her best to push him off while he clambered all over her, spewing slobber and words in equal measure.

"Staaahp," she insisted, righting herself after a long moment of floundering in the sand. By then Ingram had launched into a rapid retelling of recent events, half of which went by so quickly that Wylla barely had time to register what he said, and in the end she blinked at him, thoroughly confused. "I missed you too, doof," she said, awkwardly tossing a clump of sand in his direction with a flick of her wrist, and then said, "I saw Lycaon I think. I've been living inland, it blows there. Everyone thinks they're serious and important. Bunch of pricks."

"But seriously dude, calm the ADHD. Again, sloooower. You're living here now? Does that make you a big boss man?"

as a clod of sand whipped his way ingram attempted to quickly dodge it -- only to trip over his own gangly limbs in the process. he may have leveraged a cold stare at wylla in response, but it was lacking in conviction and a grin soon swept over his darkened muzzle. he agreed with her assertion that inland was less than ideal; other than chusi, he carried no love for wolves not of the coast. he nodded, reaffirming her statement.

his tail thumped when he heard she had possibly seen lycaon - ingram had yet to reconcile with his stormy brother and missed him with the same magnitude he had missed wylla. "yes - lycaon and i were sleeping there." he motioned towards the distant cliffs where the grotto sat. "in that cave system. i haven't seen him in a while though." his brow furrowed as he admitted the troubling fact -- but he discretely kept the reason why lycaon had left from his sibling. "no, not the boss. we haven't really figured that out yet. lycaon's mana might make the most sense but she's.. reclusive." he thought for a minute, his tail still reverberating in the sand. ingram had always deferred to wylla when they were pups -- and even as semi-adults, deferred to lycaon as well. it was not his station to be 'big boss' - and he would do a calamitous job as the alpha. it seemed only reasonable that the most natural-born and assured wolf would be alpha -- and that station unmistakably went to wylla. "now that you're here maybe you could help us? you always were bossy." he said cheekily, throwing a wink her way in case she retaliated physically.

Her gaze landed thoughtfully on the distance cliffs. It had taken her quite some time, even with Lycaon, to find the singular path down to the strand proper; every other path in the forest ended at the top of a sheer cliff overlooking the beach, and while she might've been daring, Wylla wasn't dumb enough to try to scale a vertical wall. It made sense why her brothers would stay here, and why Caiaphas had kept it in the first place. The place was damn near impregnable.

"What's a mana?" she wondered idly, the concept only really clicking in her head when Ingram continued on. "Wait. Is it that witch that stole him?" Lusca had mentioned the witch once or twice. Never in good taste. As a result, Lusca's daughter held no love for the cretin that had stolen their third sibling, even though they'd never met as far as she could recall, and she pulled a face. "No nope nope noooo sir." As if to punctuate her distaste for having to live below the very same creature that had supposedly broken her family apart, Wylla thumped her tail twice in the sand, then fixed her orange eyes back on her brother's dark face.

His suggestion earned an equally disgruntled expression. "That sounds like wooork," she complained, stretching her toes out in the sand and playfully pressing the tips of her claws to his forearm. "Why don't you do it?"

ingram followed wylla's gaze to the rocky outcropping that marked the height of ankyra's perimeters -- the cliffs sheer and impossible to travel, and the dark hearth of the forest deep and intimidating. he had not found a safe path up the cliffs yet -- every effort had been frustrated by crumbling walls or dangerously slim ridges that not even a bird would comfortably sit upon.

"mana is his word for that lady lusca hated. yeah, the witch." he leaned in, his ears pulled back as he spoke: "lycaon likes her." like wylla he had reservations, but he would let wylla form her own opinion of the wretched seawolf -- at first he had been thoroughly against sharing house with such a creature, but lycaon's adoration of the sylph softened some of his suspicons.

he nipped playfull at her feet as she pushed into him. "it's work.. but you'd be able to boss us around. tell people to fetch you a nice clutch of herring eggs.. or crab claws." he grinned, trying to think of other benefits to being the big boss. being mean for no purpose, telling people what to do, having two loyal hefty trash bag boys at her behest -- really, was there anything better?

"Blugh," was the only response she felt was justified for that. She couldn't imagine how anyone could actually like their captor. She supposed it was possible Lycaon hadn't been properly told that Caiaphas had stolen him, just as it was possible that Lusca had exaggerated about some of it, but at the end of the day she lived in a binary black-and-white world where wolves were either friends or enemies. Her mother was a friend, which made Caiaphas an enemy.

There would be plenty of time to figure out how wrong that way of thinking was when she came face-to-face with her.

Ingram made a good point. If there was one thing Wylla liked, it was getting things for minimal effort. Although she had become a proficient hunter out of necessity, if she could weasel easy food out of someone else, that was her preferred method. And really, did it take much to convince a weasel to do something out of its comfort zone when it might mean an easier life? "I wouldn't boss you around," she said, flipping back her jet ears as if the very notion was preposterous. "Just... everyone else." She thought for a minute, even though he had already convinced the little greedy monster in her brain, and she turned back to him and proclaimed, "okay, fine, but one of you has to do it with me."

ingram had only slowly accepted that their shared way of thinking may have been flawed. in some ways he was slow to accept change and slower still to accept the possibility things could be more than the outward shade they appeared: if anything, chusi had shown him that there were many variegated layers to an individual. that type of thought was too deep for him, but he was aware it was there -- similar to how one might watch a large floe of ice break from the water and know instinctively what was beneath the surface was much larger.

he expressed delight then, his blackened gums pulled into a genuine smile. he wouldn't have minded being bossed around, truly -- but her second statement made his jaws shut quick. wasting no time he chirped: "i vote lycaon. my vote counts for 2 since i'm voting in his absence. sorry buddy, majority rules." cue giant, absolute shit eating grin.

"Lycaon it is," she agreed, though she couldn't help narrowing her orange eyes at her brother and teasingly asking, "and what do you intend to do?" She couldn't knock him too much. That scent all around the territory was distinctly his; no doubt he'd been instrumental in getting this little crew together. She rolled onto her back in the sand and wriggled back and forth, collecting debris in her mottled fur, then placed her skull against the ground and shot him a look.

"What if the crusty hag doesn't accept it?" She couldn't imagine the de facto owner of Ankyra Sound would take kindly to Wylla taking it over. "What about the others?" Not that she'd have any qualms with telling them where to shove it if they didn't like it, but if it was more trouble than it was worth, then lazy Wylla wasn't likely to fight for it.

ingram thought of what he planned to do. in truth, he had not given the future much thought. he was a creature that very much lived in the now - he lacked the cunning foresight to plan his moves carefully, or manipulate future situations to his control or benefit.

"oh, you know - loaf in second-hand power, eat everything, maybe get some tail.." he cheekily grinned, folding one paw over the other as he thought of her next salient point.

he had not considered how the seawych would take the shift in management. come to think of it, he had not seen her in days - an arrangement he vastly preferred. "i haven't seen her, so... besides... we outnumber her and she's an old crusty hag anyway. we could take her." he said all of this in the most flippant of manners, though he was not sure he could actually take kierkegaard. on second thought, he definitely couldn't take kierkegaard. "the others.. we'll just tell them to shove it." case in point exactly why ingram had no business being a leader.

"I heard, 'make sure everyone's fed'," Wylla teased with a sly look to her brother, "so I'm pretending that's what you said." Nevermind that that was sort of her job, and how she had stayed alive so damn long. Barely, at times, but who was keeping score? She craned her neck to peer back at the upside-down ocean, spotting a crab scuttling rapidly toward it, giving the lounging pair a wide berth. At least the sea had enough food to go around.

She didn't say anything for a long time while she considered the problem of the grotto's witch, but at length she shrugged and rolled back onto her belly. "Well, whatever, she's a crone like you say, what's she gonna do? Spit her teeth at us?" Cackling, the thoroughly sand-soaked she-wolf rose to her paws, shook her damp fur out right over Ingram's face, and demanded, "show me around!"

ingram basked in the quietude, savoring the silence that stretched between them. it was good to be reunited with wylla and as she peered upside down across the strand he joined her in her endeavor, viewing the world temporarily in strange and contorted lens.

her cackle was signal the reprive had ended; he shifted onto his elbows, mirroring her movements. gracelessly he rose to his feet and shook free the sand from his pelt, starting off in a shaky trot. "ok!"

ingram truly needed little bidding to explore the sound. he had spent every waking minute around it the last two weeks and would be proud to show her everything they had done to secure the little beach as their own -- from the markings he and arrille parceled along the borders, to the cache both chusi and he had slowly stockpiled, and even (probably to his chagrin) the cliffs he had dotted with little brambles to forbid trespass, and then, when he had abandoned his harebrained idea, the grotto in which he had housed the remainder of his folly.

there were little things in life that ingram found enjoyable -- but walking down the beach, recounting all of his recent happenings (except maybe the lycaon-chusi exchange) ingram found himself the happiest he had been in a long time.