Stavanger Bay i've been trying to fix my pride

NOTE: In Coelacanth’s personal timeline, this takes place the morning after this thread.

Tagging for reference! Feel free to have Komodo follow her if you want to. ♥

Bone-weary and lovelorn, the little Groenendael awoke the following morning in a miasma of heartache and physical discomfort. A fine dusting of soft, almond-colored sand clung grittily to her atramentous fur, the feathers of which had been whittled into a mantle of salt-encrusted spines. Tender lips pursed in a moue of distaste as she rose and vigorously shook herself from tip to tail, tufted ears flapping audibly as the shimmering granules danced about her like the contents of a violently agitated snow globe. Only a freshwater bath could possibly satisfy her fastidious desire to groom and preen, and she cast her sights longingly upon the faraway shore before glancing guiltily toward the Earthstalker’s sleeping silhouette. She was hesitant to rouse her erstwhile protector, but she nosed at him nonetheless with a frail, breathlike touch. When @Komodo did not immediately spring to attention, she found herself greatly relieved.

Neptune eyes scanned the horizon and clocked the position of the sun, and once the stray was satisfied that she still had a good few hours of low tide ahead of her, she stretched her tiny, gamine framework into a grand jeté and darted across the land bridge with fluid alacrity. At the very last moment, though, the sheepdog bounded headlong into a pocket of deeper water, creating a terrifically satisfying splash.

Being reunited with the shaman who had granted her father’s pack such aid had bolstered Coelacanth’s flagging spirit, and although she still bore the abuse of winter in the fiercely jutting angles of her hips, spine, and ribs, she had energy enough to gambol and frolic in the ocean she loved, drawing strength from its cleansing touch. The wounded, desolate look in her limpid cerulean eyes contrasted sharply with the animated twists and turns of her balletic musculature, but a cerise flicker in the distance soon drew her attention and encapsulated her in a waiting stillness. Now the depth of her hurt was made plain; she watched Hemlock with the wary, hangdog countenance of a sensitive dog with heavy-handed captors.

At long last, something clicked for the inky ingénue. “I know you,” bespoke the feeble wave of her feathered tail, blurring cobalt beneath the shallows. No words had been exchanged the last time Seelie had come across the fire-kissed female, but she sought to conjure an answering sense of acknowledgment from the viridian-eyed dryad by recreating their ill-fated first meeting: she whuffed softly, tufted ears nestling demurely against her crown, and made herself small before the paprika-furred healer.