Seaside Moors although I'm itty-bitty, sittin' pretty

let's say vague backdating, end of aug/beginning of sept! <3

she and @Sobeille had found the moors on accident. 
chani, having no idea what the moors actually were, had tried to consider all the definitions she knew for various sea-features. their grandmothers had been very far from where sapphique now stood, she knew, and so with eagerness she headed up the coast.
the storms which had not seemed so strong near flattened the cousins here, in this sprawl of treacherously rolling land and the grey clouds above it.
chani found herself separated for a moment from sobeille, whirling in all directions as she searched the seaside prairie. her voice was pitched to call, but the wind took it away at once.

here upon the storm flattened butte that announced the moor’s beginning, sobeille felt strangely exposed.

it was cold here, the moors comprised of dark blues and sallow tan — like a bruise spilled over sickly tapestry. but the wind was strong and the scents many. sobeille found herself lost among the sunken roads and deep pitches of tidewater.

later she called for chani, but the wind stole her voice away. she followed her tracks until they were near a high arch of wind-spat grass. what you be t’inking chani? she half-yelled into the howling roar, turning her gaze to examine the whole of chani’s thoughts.

"how did dey do it? how can one live here?" she murmured into sobeille's ear, at last pressed to find a place away from the tearing wind where they might speak. however, a cursory glance of the land at length suggested they would have to walk.
still, there was a hard dominance to the place, a regality that had lent itself to scraping a palace out of the moorweald. every breath of air was tinged in salt, and a glance backward showed the broad expanse of endless ocean.
a cluster of spindly trees leant together, and it was toward this place chani headed now.

sobeille had seen many places, but not many places such as this. she imagined the surface of earth was like the surface of some giant’s skin — if sapphique was the strong arch of spine, this place was a deep bruise that would not heal.

they made for a thin collection of trees that made their last stand in this cold place; she wondered, do trees get cold? sad? do they watch the world and wish they could participate in it the way those that walked could? or did their dark roots hold a deep knowledge, ever reaching through realms unknowable to those who tread the surface?

mebbe it was different den. sobeille mused, but didn’t believe it. maybe they were cut from a harder stock, and this place was balmy by their standards. or mebbe dis be a bad day to visit. it could be warmer in de summer.

"maybe," but she glanced toward the cold sea now. without any forests or works of stone to break the wind, these stems would remain bent and the inhabitants scoured. whatever their grandmothers had managed, chani did not feel it was in her either.
there arose the knowing that perhaps because they had carved a life from the moorland, they did not want any to break more ground. it was claimed. she missed sapphique then, fiercely.
"do you feel anytin'?" she asked her cousin at last. spirits were in all places; did the lwa here call to sobeille as she had yet to hear?

sobeille let her senses loose into the world. she closed her eyes and listened to the howl of the wind. she imagined her paws reaching down, down into the soil like the hungry roots of the persevering trees. in her mind’s eye her skin and fur were the ocean; moving and stirring and ever influenced by the change of wind and the moon.

and in this deep imagining, she tried to pull from her searching senses this world’s meaning.

the wind was impossibly old. the stone she stood upon had existed longer than living memories. and the trees had seen nations rise and fall, each carving their small existence out of a chunk of rock incomprehensive to the life toiling besides it.

she felt deeply, but what of it, she could not say. finally she broke off into a sigh. i don’.. know. i wish we could close our eyes and be like de birds, flying over dis place when our ancestors were on it. she did not know if she loved this place; the challenge of it intrigued her, but she also wished for some profound signal that this was where they belonged. instead, all she got was the prohibitive shriek of the wind in her ears. what you be feelin’?

"not'in'. it be an old place, but dat be all i sense."
had their grandmothers found magick in the land that dipped and turned in on itself? had they delighted in the keening wind, in the way the grasses bent their backs beneath the lash of that scouring cry? had they enjoyed the stunted trees, the great air-swept boulders which punctuated the landscape like blunt teeth?
for all her speculation, chani found no calling, no muted joy. it was not a place meant for habitation.
she gave sobeille a long, sober glance, turning back toward the shoreline and its freer pathways.

part of sobeille worried that chani had deeper senses than her; that she would reach deep into the untapped pool that was her ancestors' genetic memories, and pull out from it the squalling, ripe meaning of this place.

cold relief washed over her windwhipped skin. she shared with chani one last solemn glance to this cold place, before she fell in step behind her cousin -- eager to leave the scouring cry of the wind here to desolate some other hall, just not her own.