Totoka River you can be an angel of mercy

NOTE: In Seelie’s personal timeline, this takes place after her thread with Sriracha.
It is the final thread in her “Return to the Teekon Wilds” chapter.

Immediately following the night of celebration, the little Groenendael traced the shoreline eastward. She bade farewell to the pinnipeds and their rocky shoals, danced her way across the mirror-like river delta, and looked with poignant fondness upon Marbas’ island. Restlessly she wandered the cape, nimble paws carrying her past a series of rocky cliffs as she chased a pod of dolphins, stopping only when territory borders forced her to. Kierkegaard’s scent drew her to the sirens’ hallowed ground; and yet, a pressing need to keep moving spurred her onward. At the eleventh hour she bathed in seawater set aglow by bioluminescent plankton — and just as the first glimmers of dawn began to outshine the glittering expanse of stars, the inky ingénue set her sights further north and turned away from the breathtaking radiance that surrounded her. With a single backward glance and a fierce ache in her heart for those she would leave behind — Doe, Marbas, Kierkegaard, Dagfinn, Starbuck, Szymon, and Chusi — Coelacanth left the Teekon Wilds entirely, intent on finding her wayward twin.

A morass of unspoken words tangled thickly within Coelacanth’s heart as she carefully traced the familiar northern coastline further and further south. The distant barking of sea lions evoked a deep-seated sense of comfort that smoothed the brittle edges of her waiflike framework and coaxed her stuttering, jittery gait into a ghost of its former elegance. When she reached the glimmering delta chain at last, catlike paws touching down with pinpoint precision, a soft sigh billowed her concave sides and snaked in misty tendrils from her lips. She didn’t look for Marbas anymore, having lost all hope that she would find the charcoal-patterned wolf who had wounded something far more sacred than flesh with a swift flash of his fangs, but his memory was imprinted upon this place in an indelible way. It belonged to him, as did the island across the sea.

In many ways, Coelacanth had failed. She had lost touch with every friend she’d made in the Teekon Wilds, only to come up short in the search for Amoxtli. Lone wolf — stray dog — none could lay claim to her, and she, in turn, could lay claim to none. The loneliness she felt worsened by the day, threatening to consume her — but the wariness intrinsic for both halves of her muddled ancestry had long since sharpened to a fragile skittishness. It was a double-edged blade that simultaneously kept her safe and made it harder for her to interact appropriately with others of her kind. Aside from Szymon — who she trusted only because of his relationship to Doe — and the starsilver berserker, she had fled from every wolf she had encountered since her return to the wilds. Shivering, her inkdark fur dappled with snowflakes, she turned inland.

Snow. Despite her poor condition and heavy heart, the little Groenendael’s attention was drawn with rapt eagerness to the icy crunch that marked her steps. She hadn’t even noticed it at first, being so lost in her own melancholy. A sudden lengthening of her stride betrayed her dancer’s sprightly musculature, and her tiny body arced into a grand jeté, each willowy limb outstretched in a prolonged, balletic leap. She landed in a fine dusting of the stuff, then dipped her shoulders to roll and flop like a earthbound sea lion through the wintry expanse. Yes, she thought, banishing what negativity she could as clusters of ice collected in her feathery fur, I have failed — but I am not defeated. Not yet.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and she straightened immediately, brilliant Neptune eyes settling with mingled eagerness and curiosity on a wolf far taller than herself. Her predominant emotion was shyness — a fact made evident by the anxious way she glanced over her snow-dappled shoulder and refocused on the stranger with an airy, beseeching whine. Dainty paws ghosted forward one step before backpedaling two, and her elegant, tufted ears strained forward upon her skull as her nose quivered. Fruitlessly she tried to glean his intentions. The wild, frenetic inclination to flee was paramount, but a harrowing desire not to be alone anymore rooted her to the spot. Anxious little whimpers and whines tumbled airily from her lips, toneless and frail, as her sumi-e brush tail beat nervously against her hocks.