Wheeling Gull Isle You Dream About Going Up There, But That is a Big Mistake

Driftwood had been ferrying shells, one by one, all morning. He liked seashells, and he thought that Coelacanth and hopefully Stockholm did too—they had chosen to live on an island, after all!—but of course right now they were a little busy focusing on other things. So Driftwood had taken it upon himself not only to help out with the hunting where he could and build up the pack stores, but also to gather them these seashells. Anchored to the densite pretty securely by the demanding little ones, Driftwood thought she wouldn't mind at all having some lovely decor to spruce the den up a little more and vary the scenery better. Besides which, they smelled nicely of the ocean, and wouldn't that be a beautiful aide not only to soothe Seelie's nose and remind her of the waters she loved, but also to introduce the little ones to the scents of the wider world in which they would soon be living?

He had found a particularly large fan shell that he was now carrying up the slight incline to add to the growing pile, when a sudden shift in the wind caught his attention. He hadn't spent very much time on the eastern end of the island as of yet, but the wide pale sands leading up to the area he'd heard called Coaltree Rise seemed quite a bountiful spot to go hunting shells. He was distracted from his quarry however by the unfamiliar scent he could taste on the breeze. He shot the pile of seashells a quick, puzzled glance, but they hadn't budged an inch in all the time he'd been here and were obviously not the source. He trotted forward somewhat more cautiously with the blue fan still clutched carefully between his teeth; it had only one tiny hole in its broad, gently-curving surface, a small pinprick that was really only visible if you squinted closely, and Driftwood definitely and particularly didn't want to lose it to some thieving seabird or something.

His neck curved a little closer to the ground, his tail streaming straight out behind him like a banner as he felt the ground beneath his paws turn from sand to coarse grass to lusher, flower-dotted verdance that gently tickled at his toes. None of these were quite the smell he was looking for, however. That scent's source was a little further away, and the moment Driftwood saw them, he froze in place, and then, legs wobbling slightly, dropped flat to his belly. He stared at the herd in amorphous dread, his eyes following the lazy flick of their tails, the proud long muzzles that raised toward the sky occasionally before dropping to the earth to browse the foliage once more. But most of all, his gaze riveted to the quick stomp of a hoof, probably only reacting to some particularly pesky fly or other, but the sight nonetheless raised some unspoken choking fear from deep within Driftwood. He sat there clutching his seashell hard as he found his rigid body suddenly quite unwilling to move at all, save for the sudden violent flinch that quivered through him as the shell clamped in his jaws suddenly cracked in twain with a loud, harsh SNAP, and left behind a bodywide involuntary trembling in its wake. He stared at the horses with fixed dread as he wondered if the hooved menaces might have a little something more to say about the noise.