Ankyra Sound gulper shark

here the world was untouched.

here was nothing and everything. at the edge of the world, no one was witness. yet all that mattered to her was witness.

cold, churning waves nipped at her heels. clouded skies acted like a shawl over her. she was made from these very things. just from a different coast.

for a long while she only stood like an oceanic relic that had become beached.

there was a wolf down along the shore.

sobeille took note of it with flat eyes rivaling an octopodean stare.

inching forward, she noticed that this wolf seemed a figurehead of the land it sprung up from; basalt greys, storm blues, hardness outlined in stone and salt.

the wind told her the relic was female. staying the impulse to be proprietary, sobeille made herself known over the wind: what you be starin' at?

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the voice could have been the sea itself.

"what you be starin' at?"

she inhaled deep, the saltwater may as well have flooded her lungs for how much she took it in through the air. her features cracked with a smile. true and genuine delight.

everything. the whole world. she declared with a contentment that came only from places like this. she cared not if she sounded like a fanatic. you here seein' it too? her gaze finally turned away from the waves to look upon the figure that spoke.

if dogfish had been raised from the ocean then this woman had been cut down from the coastal forest.

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any jealousy for this place hoarded in sobeille's heart was eased by the reverence in which the stranger spoke.

good; she saw it too. she saw that here was the salt of the earth. the beginning and the end. she saw the beams of light and the strings of stone and gold that made this place sacrosanct. the blood, too -- that poured out in invisible rushes and spoke of a past and future too terrible for written word.

a legacy.

yes. sobeille breathed, coming to sit alongside the stranger. dis place be haunted.

every coast, cove and bay claimed its own haunt.

maybe it was the constant sound that drove people to madness. maybe it was the instability of living besides something so wild and untamed.

she was not scared of another haunted place in the world.

do the spirits here hold onto you? her eyes were delighted to think she spoke with someone who brought forth rituals of the sea. dogfish had never been able. only a helping hand, at most. she had watched while kitefin had brought such sacred nights to life.

it was good for the world that there were grunts like dogfish.

much like the stranger, a haunted world did not scare sobeille.

she had seen what spectre could not leave this place -- and unknown to her, it was the very same spectre that haunted val's dreams.

sobeille mulled over the stranger's question. it was cutting and rather emotionally intelligent.

i t'ink dat mebbe -- and here she took a leap of faith opening herself up to ridicule -- it be a part of me. not me, but someone like me. or mebbe me in a past life, or a future life. turning sidelong to see if she held the seaborn's attention (and to ensure there was no ridicule in her gaze) sobeille continued.

dere's a ghost in dat cave. lwa, we call dem. but dis one holds onto dis place. sobeille motioned to the grotto, holding off on further explanation until dogfish's faith was made known to her.

enchanted.

the little sharktooth grunt listened keenly. just because she had never been able to do any of this, did not mean she had no interest in it. it felt like a world she could only glimpse at a window through.

here was this coastal woodcut woman, her window.

and that's the one? that's you in one of your lives? her eyes fixed firmly on her company's face. she could not let this one go, could she? this tether, this connection, to the other side of the world.

i have no offerings, but i can find them, if visits can be done.

dangerous! to open herself up to a haunting!

it was bold to announce the spectre in the cave was one and the same as herself. sobeille did not know a better word would suit the relationship perfectly fine: kinship affinity.

i don't t'ink it be wantin' offerings. she started, remembering how the spectre had spoken to her the day she'd nearly drowned.

it was neither malicious nor benevolent; though it had saved her life, sobeille knew it had not been a kindness, but a sense of duty.

you want to see?

was that window cracking?

it felt like cold air rushed over her, shivers down her spine. someone realistic would have pointed out the cold air and how it surfed over the oceans.

yes, she nearly gasped.

a follower prepared to be led.

the last girl sobeille offered to show the grotto had quailed and ran -- or was that a living memory of some other soul?

cold air spluttered in raw gusts over their hides as she turned, making for the dark mouth.

here the wind whistled down into subterranean columns; from the outside, one could sense the damp and tepid air that made its predominance in the blackened walls.

watch your step. she cautioned, ducking into the grotto's mouth. a black-throated tunnel lead downwards some twenty yards; just enough light here to illuminate a steep drop that opened up into a large cavern.

sobeille leapt down -- unbeknownst to her, in the exact same jumping fashion of a long-dead grandme with haunting yellow eyes.

dogfish could have been turned into spirit food. an offering.

instead she was warned about the step. given guidance into this dark place and allowed to experience as the living. so far, at least. dogfish was nowhere near as graceful in her leap.

why do you show me?

her voice felt endless here.

the ocean might have carried her words away forever, but the cavern kept them. echoed them endlessly so none would ever forget.

the cavern kept more than words; it kept lifetimes. standing here among the stalacite flowstone, sobeille got the sense they'd witnessed thousands of lives and hundreds of generations grow and reshape the world around them, as the world reshaped them.

no one else is interested. sobeille answered in her clipped way, motioning to a faint blue glow at the end of the cavern. the portion of the cavern nearest to them and the exit held onto dayglow; but the back half was cistern black with bouncing blue phosphorescence radiating off its distant face.

dat's the pool where i almost died. sobeille walked towards the glowing moon-pool, curious if the rippling waters would be the owner of a new skeleton within their depths. peering at its steep banks, she frowned to notice the rib bone that had been her salvation had been pried from the mud face.

she knew it would be foolish to hope the tide had simply sucked it away. i pushed a witch in dere. sobeille admitted, turning to the stranger to gauge her reaction.

she could appreciate the blunted answer. truth bound them deeper than any lies. this cavern would do it too, mark them both in some ways. it already had the dark-furred woman.

now it was dogfish's turn to come away with something new.

death confession, violent confession. her interested hunger grew and grew. the pool reflected in her own blue eyes. as if the ripples moved through her own mind now. maybe they did.

maybe the pool would be her takeaway.

is she still in there? there was no immediate proof of it, but she wanted to believe. she wanted to think that a witch's spirit was in here too. there was no fear in her (or perhaps common sense) as she crouched and bent over. peering deeper into the waters.

truthfully, very few wolves understood sobeille. she was a contradiction of reserved and unreserved; doling out bits of herself she understood were socially acceptable, while hiding what she knew would horrify her peers.

yet at times, the parts she carefully hid were more than impulses. they guided her as lwa guide sapphique; she felt them sing in her blood, and knew their purpose was to chart her to some higher course.

the stranger peered over the pool, her claws just barely over the wall's lip -- flirting tantalizingly with danger she did not know lurked behind her. sobeille heard the tumbling sound of sediment -- saw the way the pebble's intrusion of the surface sent waves of blue light rippling from the well.

and sobeille answered the ugly impulse that instructed her to shove this girl underwater and hold her there. she seized the back of her grey skull and pushed her head underwater with the deft strength of a killer that has become practiced; thinking of the girl blossom, and how she'd imagined the noise her air-bubbles would make as they rent the surface. what quality her scream would take as water flooded her lungs --

sobeille woke from her reverie. the sea-grey stranger was still standing at the rim, and sobeille hadn't moved a muscle.

i t'ink she escaped. she shook the ebbing confusion from her mind with a rough shake of her spine. when i was drowning, de ghost tol' me 'ow to get out. dere used to be a rib bone dere. gone now. mebbe de witch took it. if this was true, sobeille worried for her future. she knew enough of sigils to know that bone would be a powerful totem. dat witch is 'ow i lost dis tooth. sobeille pointed to the missing canine, then abruptly swapped topics. 'ow come you are 'ere? not in de cave wit' me -- i mean -- 'ow did you find de sound?

mentally she chided herself. it made sense that a witch would have escaped the haunted pool, wouldn’t it? if anyone would be equipped in such a situation…

and she was willing to agree that the witch probably did take the rib bone. a death souvenir, if not just done out of spite outright. yet dogfish did not say any of this aloud. aware that her interest did not make her a master in any topic spoken so far.

a shine of admiration for the missing tooth.

and knowing it was likely a shame a witch had ran off with a piece of this woman.

she was glad the question turned to something she could confidently answer. her tail swept behind her once as she stood again. unaware that she danced along a knife’s edge and her world remained brighter for it.

you travel far enough you’ll find any sound or cove or bay. just happened to stumble upon yours — or maybe it wasn’t just happenstance. she confessed in a way that said maybe something here had a part in it all. i can’t leave the coast, anyway.

maybe she could, maybe. however the desire was next to none and there would never be a reason to find out if that was true.

for a time sobeille was silent, noting the excellent play of blue light on the stranger's features. though the color was in the neighborhood of cold on the light spectrum, there was a softness to it -- like layers of fresh snow on a sleeping meadow.

she said it was happenstance; something that plucked a peculiar string in sobeille. do you believe in coincidence?

coincidence.

a tricky word that seemed to bring more trouble than it did anything else.

i believe in all of this, she gestured around them and landed her point on sobeille. Iwa, witches, coincidence. whatever you want to call it, i find myself believing it.

this stranger, though she was carved the color of stone and andesite, seemed more suited to clay. she was a believer; a malleable surface to stretch and shape to sobeille's own errands.

she nodded as if she found the answer acceptable. coming to stand by the pool, sobeille draped her paw into the water's surface and watched the light skitter away like a playful colt.

do you trust coincidence?

and the reflections rippled within her gaze.

if dogfish held the pool within her, then sobeille was the whole cavern. an endless thing with many secrets hidden within. something she had felt grateful to discover, to come to know. even if only on surface level.

i trust.

like an oath sworn.

i trust, she said -- and that sealed something for sobeille.

she scanned the walls, the hanging teeth of stone above, the lonely and sad cistern that was the last lively thing in this desolate place.

now what will you do? because though they had just met, sobeille had shown more to this stranger than most -- and a part of her jealously guarded heart could not withstand it being known to anyone outside of ankyra's shores.

the question was fatter than whale blubber. yet nowhere near as much of a glutton’s delicacy. she chewed on it regardless for a moment and found a line of thinking that she liked.

where are you living?

a question answered with a question, but she knew it would lead somewhere if the other girl would go along.

most conversations, it's sobeille grilling her company. rarely do they ask questions back. clinical as sobeille is, perhaps her cold manner dissuades them.

i be living in de cliffs above. sobeille answered readily enough. you? she got the impression that this one was itinerant -- if her earlier mention of following coves and the sea was any indication.

drawing her paw from the synergistic blue of the water, sobeille motioned for the girl to follow her. want to see some'ting else cool?

waiting to find out. but she had been given a breadcrumb trail to follow now. some sort of guidance that might last, might be washed.

she did not think anything either of them said was so fickle as to wash out, though.

always. it was with trust she answered and she walked. the cavern alone had been worth the chance, the pool even more so, and the tales most of all. dogfish was easy enough to please and this encounter alone might have pleased her through multiple lifetimes.

was that suggestive? sobeille took longer to reply this time, reworking the framework of her response. she surveyed the stranger from bow to stern and realized they'd yet to share names -- something that sparked unfamiliar excitement.

her maman would like her. but would she like sapphique's culture?

sobeille guided her down another tunnel that split out into a second large chamber. this one was smaller than the first, but clearly excavated. what lived here before had clawed the surface of the walls and left thousands of illegible scriptures in every bite of claw to stone.

at the center, a crude plinth.

an altar.

and around it, the desecrated and dusty remains of sacrificial bones.

not sobeille's doing, by the ages of dust upon them. the girl turned her eye to dogfish in silence.

for the walk, they did not speak. which she unexpectedly found herself grateful for. it built up the atmosphere that swirled around them. maybe that was the spirits, but she found she could not voice such a thing.

shivers down her spine again.

this time it felt like no ocean breeze could be blamed for it.

the walk of faith was worth it. the sight was something old and ancient. something otherworldly entirely and it seemed to be stuck in that world it had come from. some part of her wished to lean into it so near she might breathe the dust in. as if that might make this whole place haunt her, live in her. a step closer, an admiration for the old things that she dared not breathe on or in.

this was the kind of thing that needed to be preserved. this was the kind of thing that brought life to a haunted corner more than anyone’s tired little bedtime stories. it was real.

it was flesh and blood and bone.

her gaze swept with a reverent look now. nothing she had seen compared to this moment now. as if something had nearly possessed her. jaws split as if she meant to speak and yet they clipped close just as fast.

no words could do justice and the impact of it all laid clear as a summer’s day on her face.