Totoka River dancing with the waves

for @Mirabelle ! whoosh

 There was only so much time a man could spend being aimlessly restless. Étoille was testing that theory now. For so long he'd been content with the way things were and it'd carried him through three years of life, brief stints in packs and brief contact with others moving him forward. The impressions of those he met lingered - the deaf woman, the storyteller, the stricken girl-turned-alpha and her strange, coy-limbed partner, the firey red woman in the meadow - the others, if briefer, if less memorable, but still: none of these met a genuine connection. 

 He passed the Plateau on the way back to the coast, thinking of the excitable pack founder's offer, and skirted around it. Something was still holding him back. Something as silly as a lack of purpose, maybe. The coast was welcome, warm under his large paws. He traveled a little until he met where the shore was split by a river. His belly rumbled, the sensation grounding him once more in the present. The man would fish a bit, fill his stomach and keep his mind from turning any more.