Totoka River the upper peninsula

Seabright eyes shimmered radiantly at the quiet affirmation he offered, but Coelacanth made no comment as to her own name; she had lost something of herself when she’d lost Poppy, and she didn’t know how to get it back. She followed the slow pan of his moonbright gaze, her delicate features solemn, and extinguished another half-meter of space with a few sprightly steps. The selkie’s daughter moved fluidly, with a dancer’s balletic grace — but she stopped on a dime that seemed incongruous with her distinctive legato cadence. “Be at peace,” she thought at him, a slow blink of her cerulean eyes and a flicker of her feathered tail transmitting comfort. Delicately, she outstretched her muzzle toward him, centimeter by tremulous centimeter; she moved as if she was afraid to be burned, and her finely drawn head tipped to the side as she drew in his scent.

It was a long moment before she found her voice.

“Undersea pack,” she whispered, posturing like a pointing hound, one willowy forelimb tucked against the slope of her ribcage as her fox-fine muzzle found a trajectory across the water and her tufted periscope ears set their sights. She was a living arrow, and she turned tick by inexorable tick to face the other pack she knew to be closest. “Ironsea pack,” she breathed, repeating the gesture with wordless eloquence. She watched him like a bright-eyed sparrow, throwing caution to the winds and drawing nearer still. She did not know much of the packs beyond the sea, but named her dearest ally: “Morningside pack,” she offered in a silky susurrus, one forepaw lifting to gesture far and away. She closed her eyes against the involuntary pain that was engendered by her last remembered sight of Aditya and summed up, “All T-Teekon Wilds,” dancing a pirouetting circle that set the water around her to singing in a miniature rainstorm.