Blackbeak Bluff pwazon

mireille was livid. sleeplessly she kept watch on the ridges and cliffs, the shoreline, the sound.
she marked the borders, scouring them deep.
now, in a fit of defiance and territoriality, mireille stalked across the bluffs, leaving deep scent-swatches in the grass with kicks of her hind paws.

Alone again.

How he had slaved away under that maddening foreign sun. Honed his body into a weapon of terrible, isolate destruction. Saved the life of a brother. Did all that was asked of him, and more. For what?

A man should not be so far from his home. This rang true for everyone but him. Daniil was a rootless vagrant, a cuckoo bird, a spore on the wind. He didn't even form an imprint on the bed after a night of sleep. He barely left footprints now as he walked to the beach, his path hugging a windbitten boulder.

Seagulls carved low, oblique paths in the overcast sky. Their nasal calls were loud but warped by the wind, which brought him a nose full of pack-scent. He paused, his face inscrutable, and braced his long body against the rock - aware of pack-wolves and their incessant patrolling.

mireille looked up from her fury to see a man, an unassuming and furry man, one who resembled bartholomew in look if not in coloration.
but he was a man all the same, and her wrath was kindled anew.
"gawk!" she snarled with all the force of a curse. "gawk an' tell me why i should not be tearin' your eyes from your fool head!"
the young obsidian prowled forward, possessive and enraged. she did not care his appearance for now, only his status as pathetic and lowly man.

Childlike, his face. Calm aside from a slight stiffness in the lower lip, briefly stubborn. She spat at him, her face and body coiled tight with rage. He didn't parse the words, but her tone and expression said everything. He was used to communicating in broad strokes, the pronunciation only an afterthought in their patchwork patois. A slap on the head, bared teeth, those were enough for you to remember anything.

He tensed in response, only to press himself against the ground, contorting so that his underbelly faced her knotted face, her sharp teeth. A whine flickered through his throat, the whites of his eyes visible as they rolled. Never say what you can show.

the sight of exposed vulnerability quelled the wolftooth primacy of her brain; mireille suffered his presence only a moment longer to flick her eyes over his doglike form. she drew away with an epithet on her mouth and a softening, perhaps, to the hard glint of one emerald eye. 
a bullish snort issued from the saltwolf's nostrils. "you might have better fare in sweetharbor, t'ere. an easier time wid de locals as well."
not kindness, but not meanness; mireille spent herself and set her green eyes on the sea. if he wanted to retreat, now was the moment to do it, before she whirled on him again to glut the hard knife of her growing and realized hatred.

Exit Daniil!

No bite came. He watched her face through the thin spray of fur at his chest, his chin pressed against his collar.

Sweetharbor, he repeated, his accent making the word viscous and dense, where hers had made it buoyant.

She did not look at him anymore. He was silently relieved to be rid of that pinpoint fury. It was what an ant felt under the concentrated sunlight of a magnifying glass. A prickling sensation that crossed over to a bright pain before you knew it, as inexplicable as flames that burned atop the ocean, along thin films of gasoline.

He took her dismissal literally, pulled himself to his feet, and began to trot in the direction traced by her gaze.

<3

on that island was heda.
and sometime soon, she and heda would be leaving. not forever. not even for a long time. but they would be together and out from the eyes of anyone who need not be chosen to look at them.
the man was gone when she turned about, and mireille, finding this to be preferable, struck back toward home. 
later she might regret having abused him, but touching tonguetip to the steel edge of her power over a man had a metallic taste she did not want to release.