Oystercatcher Tide Pools place your bets

A steady rumble of beatitude was all that Komodo could offer the women for their raucous chorus. He was not a bard himself, nor a performer, so more often than not he acted as the audience rather than a willing participant in their zesty song and dance — but he was appreciative of their energy and vigor and the difference that it brought to each day. The more Komodo wayfared, the more Komodo realized that he need not waste time on the mundane and the monotonous; to have a traveling spirit meant to delight in things both beautiful in their simplicity and enchanting in their complexity. It was a lifestyle that revered the uncertainty of what tomorrow might bring, but the certainty of survival. The earthstalker liked most meeting those with a story to tell, or wisdom to impart, or the drive for enterprise; and he found these the trio of Sirimiri, Serein and Brontide fulfilled these wants greatly. The earthstalker stayed with the trio not out of necessity, but out of preference.

As the two meadowlarks wove in and out of their trajectory, singing in their ears as a bee would woo a flower, Komodo gave a chuffing laugh and shook his head. Then he settled his awareness on their coastal milieu, probing the landscape to find any sense of familiarity — he could not glean the summer’s hospitality amongst winter’s harsh cumbrance, but all he had ever known of this place was the frivolity of the warmer seasons, anyways. Komodo cut his gaze against the grayness of thick, briny air to see if he could see Wheeling Gull Isle amongst the mists — he couldn’t, and reasoned that they were still too far away [but inside he believed it was more likely that the sea swallowed had the land and reclaimed it with the very brine seas that had birthed them].

The twins ran ahead to raid the tidepools and the brute lumbered on alongside Brontide, stride intentional and low and jaguar-like. As close with the trio as he was, Komodo would always be the one not of their blood — a fact all four of them were more than happy to gloss over every time they met or decided to emigrate together. The earthstalker was a man of the gods and did not believe in coincidences, so when the power that be saw fit to reunite them, Komodo happily obliged in this divinity and followed them back into the lands he had so recently left. Allowing a trusting space to form between he and the others, Komodo began to pilfer through the shallow pools — the salt in which kept them from freezing over completely — peeling apart the small crustaceans with his incisors and imbibing upon the sweet flesh found within.