Wheeling Gull Isle xxv. in the town of black magick

In the shadows of the wood, beneath a canopy of green, she went to speak with the gods of her mother. 

Silence permeated the air, the movements of the Seelie that circled and traced in the loam - crude loops blessed by crumbled liverwort and white sage. These herbs left bitter tastes blooming on her tongue as she piled their leaves at the centre, pinned by a chunk of tiger's eye. 

The stone was cool, wet in her mouth as she plucked it from its bowl, the yellowed skull of a deer, where it had soaked in the anointed waters beneath the light of the moon's phasing. Slippery, it tumbled, nudged into place by an onyx snout similarily purified in rosewater. 

There was grace in the calculated movements, beauty in the silent reverence, a language hidden in the trembles of her lips. Tangible relief shone in her gaze as wind whispered through the branches, heart catching in her throat - a story that spoke of beseeching safety, pleading protection.

The closer she came to the shore, the faster her heart beat. It had not been so long ago that she and her family had left the area, but still she found herself feeling so incredibly excited at the idea of going back and seeing it again. The goodbyes spoken had been warm and loving, and she felt her family understood the fact that she might not return to them for some time if she wound up finding a pack of her own, or decided to stay at the Isle where she had been born. She felt something pulling her back to the Isle, as though a magnet had been placed inside her chest and was being drawn in more and more with each step she took. She breathed in the salty air before she could even see the ocean, ad exhaled with relief and happiness when she finally breached a tall dune, and set her eyes on the throbbing surface of the vast body of water. 

Finding her way back to the land bridge was no problem; she remembered the area well, though it did look a bit different. The shore was an ever-changing thing, she told herself, and she could not expect it to look the same all the time. Even the landbridge had changed, shifting slightly under the constant ebb and flow of the waves, but still it held fast, and made it easy for her to walk to the island. The only thing that stopped her there was the scent of wolves. Someone had come to the island and made it their home. 

She wasn't sure exactly how to feel about that, as she did not recognize any of the scents. Had it been a former packmate, she might have warmed to the idea instantly, but now there was a band of strangers on the island, claiming it as their home. She judged them instantly, hoping that they might be the sort of wolves who would properly respect the place she had been born, and she called out for an audience even though she was not the most talktive creature on the planet. She was keen to see who it was that had claimed this as their homeland- and curious to see if they might let her revisit her birthplace, for nostalgia's sake.