Totoka River krebs cycle

This post ran away from me! I am sorry. Yes! I get it, haha! ^^

Four weeks.

The deep punctures and tears that had marred the soft, shadowed hollow of Coelacanth’s throat and collarbone had completely healed, leaving pale pink scars that were mostly hidden beneath her abundance of atramentous fur. When her feathery coat was soaked and slick against her skin, however — a frequent occurrence given her love for water — the sullied flesh glinted through the unbroken ink of her fur like tiny wings, too sharp and oblique to be parentheses. She had lost weight she could ill afford; her already delicate musculature was whittled down to a waiflike thinness; but she was alive.

Having regained the balletic ease of her natural stride, she labored over her new den, making several trips to the shimmering salt flat to collect every last one of Amoxtli’s treasures. These she carefully arranged around a small, mossy cave she’d found tucked within a semicircle of waterfalls the night Kierkegaard had stumbled upon her broken and vulnerable form. Despite the water that surrounded her, ventilation swept generously through the cozy space — and its two entrances, one half-obscured by a thin curtain of cascading snowmelt, the other concealed in a bracken of pussy willow and cotton grass, ensured that she would stay warm and safe no matter the weather. It was an ideal location — far away from territorial pack wolves, but close enough to Atoll and Kierkegaard that Coelacanth felt marginally less lonely.

It was loneliness that drew her out of hiding today — loneliness, and the first tentative pangs of hunger she had felt in weeks. Amoxtli’s disappearance on the heels of Marbas’ fury had all but eradicated her desire to eat, to the point that she couldn’t automatically place what the demanding clench of her empty stomach translated to. Clearing the weighty miasma of melancholy from her thoughts with a physical shake of her finely-drawn skull, she untangled her long, slender limbs and set out toward the sea.

Eventually the dainty, willowy silhouette of a stranger caught her eyes. Hesitating, her sumi-e brush tail trailing in the water and drawing shyly to curl around one elegant hock, Seelie came to a slow halt. The creature before her had a sharply tapered muzzle and smallness of build that could almost be mistaken for the siren of Tara, but her symmetrical, erect ears were a telltale giveaway to the contrary. The inky ingénue ventured forward one tenuous step, her graceful neck craning as she tilted her head in evident, bright-eyed curiosity to watch the scuttling of the crab and its ardent observer.