Wheeling Gull Isle sprucing up the place

The charred sequoia for which Coaltree Rise had been named had managed to hold his ground throughout the winterstorm. He was a few decades younger than the Mother Tree (she often wished he was one of her ilk; he’d look much handsomer as a spruce, thank you very much) but the pied sea crows exchanged secrets between them, coal and dust and pollen and rain caught betwixt in their hooked talons, and the two arboreal giants were quite fond of one another.

Today the birds’ flutterings spoke of death and decay: the bloated remains of horses, drowned by the crashing surf; and the broken bodies of blacktailed deer, trapped beneath felled trees. Already the beavers were rebuilding their dams; the birds were rebuilding their nests; the seawolves had returned to Wavewrack Lagoon. With a creak and a hiss of her somewhat threadbare boughs, the blue spruce tried to shake the seawolves into action.