Sea Lion Shores 1957

[barges in] I am sorry for Sizzle’s attitude. Cameo by @Coelacanth; she will post once other people have had a chance to. Just assume she darted in and darted out to get some food, please~

There was very little rhyme or reason to the Akhlut’s erratic behavior, but her mate was a ploddingly predictable beast — and the more frenetic Doe’s whims became, the closer Szymon tended to follow her. It was unfortunate for both Olive and Doe that he had lapsed in his duty today, and when the first of his beloved’s unearthly shrieks sundered the smoke-heavy lull of Donnelaith’s funeral dirge, he flew into motion as if he’d been waiting for something to happen. Perhaps he was. By the time the Leviathan heard the stranger’s plaintive, desperate-sounding cry — “Doe!” — he was already infuriated. It was unfair, but Szymon had precious little use for fairness when his mate was screaming bloody murder. The shrieks were withering at the edges, becoming incoherent and inconsolable, and by the time Szymon arrived on the scene — salt-white fur bristling, golden eyes wild, ginger-laced hackles an unkempt whirlwind — Doe had ceased to be Doe and was merely a small, sodden, tear-streaked pile of quivering fur upon the cold, hard ground. The look he shot Olive was malevolent and dangerous, as was the threatening step he took toward the pale sylph who had simply found herself on the wrong side of Doe’s temper at the wrong time, but Szymon was saved from committing a grave error that might have cost him his alliance with Arturo — if it had not been cast into the dust already — by a blur of ink that skirted between his bared fangs and the stricken peacemaker.

Szymon snapped at the sheepdog, taking out his bad mood on her more conveniently located framework, turning to spit out the mouthful of feathery fur that had tangled in his incisors with a gruff snort. He felt, looking at Doe now, that all his hard work had come totally undone — for here she was as he’d first seen her, malnourished and weakened and clinging to images only she could see. A warning rumble churned like bile in his throat before he looked in defeat at his wife and veritably crumpled to her side, fitting his body tightly against hers and issuing a warning snap toward the ink-feathered Groenendael. “Food,” he told her succinctly, “something from the c-caches.” With a hefty sigh, he rested his muzzle atop Doe’s quivering form, closing his eyes — and when he opened them, he refocused on Olive.

More quietly, “You are one of Arturo’s w-w-wolves,” he remarked, the stutter rearing its ugly head in this time of duress. The vicious expression had all but left his face, and if he did not look pleased to see Olive, he had at least managed to control his worry-induced rage to something workable and manageable. “What h-happened.” It was a demand and not a question, but Szymon had never been very good at inflections.