Stavanger Bay i’ll be your candle on the water

I am rubbish at starting threads. Sorry, @Qilaq. Tagging for reference.

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Night has fallen, but the black-banded Leviathan surveys his territory with a restless eye. His vantage point, a rime-silver outcropping of stone made gritty by sand and salt, allows him to keep an eye on the mouth of the hastily furnished den where @Doe, @Julep, and @Isengrim sleep. His cubs are twelve weeks old now, though he doesn’t measure their age in time as much as change. Julep and Isengrim’s eyes are muddy, shifting from the milky blue of infancy to Doe’s brilliant gold — Szymon can’t see his own eyes, but even if he could, he’d probably still describe the cubs’ eyes in reference to Doe — and they’re exhaustingly mobile. And loud — so much louder than his first daughter. He’s impatient for spring — or, at the very least, for a break in the weather. There’s so much the Three need to learn and he worries that time is passing by too quickly for them to get it all down. He expects them to keep their fur steeped in brine and peppered in sand — they are Cairns — and he wants them to understand things he’ll never understand — they are Doe’s.

It’s instinctive for the father to lump Qilaq in with Isengrim and Julep. He used to wonder whether the dark wolf from the flatlands was her biological father, but Qilaq’s Drop rewrote any history she might have had. “Papa” is what she calls him, and he means it when he says she’s a Cairn now. He’s come to realize that she is different — the rapid development he sees daily in Julep and Isengrim draws a sharp contrast to the slower steps he needs to take with their big sister — but it doesn’t bother him. Quite the opposite, it endears the girl to him; he strives to keep her near, not trusting the world outside the bay to offer her asylum.

Speaking of which, where is she?

Szymon rises from his perch in one sharp, fluid motion and scuttles down the slope in a series of stuttering leaps, kicking up sand as his tattered ears press intently forward upon his narrow skull. “Qilaq,” he calls quietly, giving little care to the hour. He and Doe have only just gotten her back! He hovers — uninvited and perhaps unwarranted — because he doesn’t know any other way to be. He calls again for her: “Qilaq?” and points his scarred muzzle skyward, setting free a sonorous, bass-toned howl as he summons his eldest. Then, on paws that can’t seem to stop their fidgeting, he begins to pace. At long last, he drags a frozen solid menhaden from one of the caches and begins to lick and gnaw at it, trying to work it into something softer that the Benthos will be able to devour with ease. He is determined that his wife, his children, and his wolves will stride with strength into spring — whenever the hell it gets here.

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