Wheeling Gull Isle you should know i'm no ones shore, no ones ocean

@Lucas?

After a couple of days of good rest, a few meals, Currituck easily fills back out. The resilience of puppyhood, even if she’s a bit older these days, is fast to make work on healing and now that she’s feeling better and less sluggish, she feels the desire to get her feet moving again. Plus, she has to leave the island briefly to find the glacier and let her family know where she is and make sure it’s okay she stays. She misses Tahani something terrible, as well as the other wolves, completely unaware what they’ve gone through since she’s departed the borders. She hates she hadn’t said anything before she left but they’ll know she’s okay, right?
 
The angry sky has seemed to come and go but she found a little nook in the temperate forest to shack up in case it came back ground. Though the storm may have passed, the sky above is still cloudy and there’s a wind chill, giving her a little shake, but she doesn’t hate it as much when she’d been sleeping on ice.

His first few days on the island were spent exploring the beaches and then finding his way inland, where the earth cut up toward the sky and formed an impressive bowl. Being an inland wolf at heart, he'd stuck to the forest since entering it, though he broke away one afternoon to range across the vast prairie stretching back down toward the sea. He didn't make it as far as the colossal tree before turning back because he was thirsty, but made a mental note to check it out another time.

He sated his thirst in a puddle near where the Skybowl's forests met the plains proper, then headed back into the cover of the trees. The air was cool today and the wind was unkind, but he took scant notice of it through his thick winter pelt. It chilled his ears at most, hindering him none. He hadn't come across a soul all day, so when he first noticed Currituck, he thought she was just a trick of the light and shadow in the trees and nearly passed her by. But then she shivered and his ears perked.

Hey there! he called, smiling warmly and not bothering to hide the delight in his eyes at the sight of someone new.

It’s no surprise she’s not really paying attention. She doesn’t notice the other wolf coming in her direction until he calls out to her. She jerks and turns to him, eyes widening in surprise, but she doesn’t linger in panic. Other than the strange white wolf, she’s never really been threatened, and in the safety of a pack, she quickly washes it away.
 
“Hi!” she chirps, turning and hoping over in his direction. He’s young but she can’t tell by how much given how fucking big he is. He reminds of her of the snow wolves on the glacier, of Siarut and Takiyok but with a little more color. “You’re very big,” she tell him, as if he might not know it, and offers a wide smile in return.

Part of him was expecting something very different when he approached Currituck. So far, he had met Thresher (though he didn't know of her affilitation) and Koi, and both had seemed timid beneath their social veneers. Thresher had struck him as moreso, whereas Koi was very outgoing but soft-spoken and submissive. He'd expected that all the youths of the island were the same as her with a semi-broken dialect and flighty mannerisms, so he was pleasantly surprised to be met with a firm, seemingly extroverted greeting from her.

With a booming laugh that made his paunch jiggle, the oversized Guppy sat down and rejoined, yeah, well you're very thin! She wasn't terribly thin, but with legs for days and her mixed blood, she was sharper in appearance than most wolves he'd come across. She reminded him a little of Wyatt; his brother was very thin as well. I'm Lucas! I'm pretty new here. What's your name?

Currituck huffs a little, wrinkling her nose as he points out the obvious. If she had been big and fluffy like him, she wouldn’t have had to leave the glacier and her family, but things are much more mild here and she doesn’t feel like she’s going to lose her toes. She needs to go back, though, at least once before it gets too bad for her to even be there. So far they have been a nice bunch here, friendly and familial. She likes it and though she is still cold, she feels the warmth at heart.
 
“I’m Currituck,” she says, “I’m also new! Where did you come from?” Currituck takes a deep breath, stifles a grin. “I used to live on a big icy mountain. It was very cold.”

His eyes wrinkled into a well-meaning grin and he stood once more, swinging his tail back-and-forth in a perfect rhythm. He didn't even think about it; tempo and timing just came naturally to him. Do you mean before here, or before that? he asked, but decided before she could even answer that she probably wanted to know his entire story, and he was more than happy to share it. Lucas was incredibly verbose and loved to talk, and talking about himself was no exception.

Before here I came from Coconut Grove. I lived there with Govinda, but then there was a storm and he went somewhere. I came here because I knew Dancer, but I think she's gone now. He paused to wet his lips, then said, but before that I was with a performing troupe where I learned to be an entertainer, and before that I lived in Bearclaw Valley. That's where my family lives. I want to go find it someday so I can say hi and let them know I'm still okay, but I don't know where it is from here.

He took a huge breath and asked, did you live somewhere before the big icy mountain?

Currituck doesn’t really know how to answer the question. She opens her mouth to say something but before she gets the chance, he starts to explain. Luckily, he explains everything! Before Undersea, and then before that. He mentions a place she doesn’t recognize and her head tilts. She’s only just started exploring the world and she knows about her home, she knows about Ephraim’s, and she kinda knows about where her mom had been.
 
“I think so, but I don’t remember it. I moved when I was a baby,” she explains. She suppose someone moved her, since she probably couldn’t keep up, but look at her now. She’s pretty far from the big mountain, all on her own. “I wanna go back to the mountain to let my family know where I am, too. I didn’t mean to get so far away!” she chuckles at her mistake, her rump swaying in good rhythm opposite her tail.

That's a great idea! Lucas exclaimed. He lifted his head a measure to look up through the island's many trees, half expecting to see the peak of Currituck's great mountain rising out of the clouds above them. I know how that feels. I didn't mean to wander off for as long as I did either. Now I'm not sure where the valley is. He hoped for her sake she had a better idea where her home was than he did. What he wouldn't give to descend down the steep slope into the verdant dale once more. Even the boulders, once so mundane, would be beautiful to him after all this time.

Struck with an idea, Lucas beamed and suddenly offered, what if I go with you? We can go find your mountain and maybe we'll find Bearclaw Valley somewhere too! It was naive for Lucas to believe that they would successfully find one, let alone both, of their destinations, but he was nothing if not hopelessly optimistic. Even against the most terrible odds, Lucas was gifted with the ability to find a silver lining, and he reckoned their odds were quite good.

Currituck starts to think leaving the glacier has been the best thing for her. If Tahani hadn’t put the idea in her head, she might be stuck there, but she’s gotten to meet so many new wolves that her head might explode. It’s even better when she finds others like her, like Ephraim and now kinda like Lucas. A bit smile plasters her face.
 
“Yeah!” she chirps with a wag of her tail. “I’d love to.” Between the two of them, they’ll surely find at least one, if not both, she’s sure of it.

Excellent! It was a date. With a broad grin, the jovial youth took several springy steps forward, then peered back over his shoulder at his new companion. He would be ready to go whenever she was, so long as Undersea's adults approved it. He couldn't think of any reason they wouldn't. A pair of resourceful youths, wanting to go on a cross-country trip to find the homelands they didn't totally remember? Sounded like a great idea to him, no flaws there.

Do you remember what your mountain looks like? he asked, hankering for details besides big and icy. He could describe parts of Bearclaw Valley from memory if he needed to, even if he hadn't explored all of it prior to leaving. It was a small territory with little variation in its features, which meant it was easy for him to recall. It helped that he had a stellar ability to remember things.