Wheeling Gull Isle it's a hard-knock life

Edited this to prepare it for wrapping up and archiving a bit more easily/quickly now, I hope. Sure hope your internet and computer start behaving themselves better ASAP, @Stockholm!  ;.;  Very best of luck with them both!

Oh, um, okay, said Driftwood, trying to sound nonchalant and take this in stride. But—Droman was leaving?! Well shoot, who was going to stand between him and the crabs and warn him of their secret pinchy claws and laser eyes and hidden fishtails now? Driftwood glanced over at the gampr, but Stockholm seemed pretty intimidating to him still, really. Enough so that he couldn't quite bring himself to slink over and hide humiliatingly behind him instead where the gampr might notice, at any rate. Not quite as bad as the crabs themselves, but logically speaking Stockholm's opinion of him could at the very least easily do much more damage to his standing in the pack, which in all honesty Driftwood valued quite a bit more than his actual skin. So Driftwood straightened himself up and tried to look cool, confident, and in-control. Right, so Droman was going to abandon him here. Cool...cool. Sure, that wasn't a totally deflating and demoralizing thought, that the one who seemed to know the most about these stupid crustaceans was suddenly ready to hightail it for no reason. And it wasn't as if Driftwood could drag the kid into the water with him, or really wanted to— but the youngster's sudden changing of his mind really threw him.

All right, have fun, he said rather lamely to the youngest wolf. He arched his neck and took a high, pseudo-confident step toward the water himself, but then was unable to stop himself from swallowing once and glancing back uneasily at the crab. The Overseer had thought that a swim sounded nice, after all, and to a degree Driftwood agreed, but he was more than a little uncertain about being the first one in the water, with that thing still standing there behind him, twitching and watching and clacking and plotting who-knew-what next. He had always loved the ocean, though...he just hadn't realized that in some places that meant having untrustworthy crabs and things at your back, what the heck. Driftwood loved almost everything about this island so far, but this was definitely one unfortunate mark against it, if you asked him.

Driftwood resolutely took a deep breath and his courage in his teeth as he turned away from the little crab watching him, puffed out his chest, and took several leaping steps out into the water with a mighty, messily loud splashing of ocean and sand. There— there. With all this lovely summer-warm water all around and embracing him up to his chest, surely he was safe. He grinned and relaxed, turning back toward the beach again to see if Droman was already jogging off, or if Stockholm was going to join him (or perhaps even commend him on his bravery in the face of crabsome viciousness, a small corner of his brain proposed). He even grew so bold as to raise a paw the same color as the wet sand and launch a teeny wave in Stockholm's direction, one that had zero chance of actually reaching his superior unless the gampr went unexpectedly charging into the water toward it at near-supernatural speeds. Come on in, it's great! he invited, with his waggling tail scattering a few salty blue droplets behind him as well.

Regardless of the gampr's response, Driftwood paddled himself in first one happy little circle and then a couple more before ducking briefly underwater. He poked playfully upward with a paw and observed the ripples with fascination. It took him a distracted minute or two before he remembered to check in again with Stockholm, but really, regardless of what the big wolfdog said or did, Driftwood found himself perfectly happy to bob and sport about in the waters for most of the remainder of the day— so long as he kept well clear of those dastardly crabs, and didn't venture too far from his beloved island's shores, here.