Wheeling Gull Isle if only time flew like a dove

Moorhen didn't quite seem to know what to think of the thing either, from the flickered "shrug" of her ears and her deafening silence. Except, perhaps, to think to turn it into a weapon with which to poke innocent Driftwoods...! Drift jumped as the strange set of translucent circles was jabbed into his ribs, a sneaky attack that he probably should have expected, might have anticipated if he wasn't so driven to distraction and unprepared for the lightning-speed change of attitude Moorhen again displayed. He'd had a vague recollection that he had asked her to play once before, and she'd gone all stiff and prickly and disapproving on him about it, so that he had been standing there increasingly doubting the wisdom of his offered enticement... And then she surprised him and had gotten the first tag in and was off down the Strand before he could so much as twitch. He blinked and stared stupidly after her receding umber tail for a moment, caught flatfooted, and then with a dawning grin of his own and an upward flip of the tail he took off after her. Yes, this was much more like it! He'd had about all the wordsing about of wordy words he could stand for the day; time to take some action instead!

Admittedly, Driftwood wasn't necessarily the most graceful on his feet physically, either (especially when he was nearing full-on overgrown goofball puppy mode), but he at least felt passably competent there most of the time, unlike in any verbal spars. Besides which, play was supposed to be a little overwrought and ham-handed. That was part of why he liked it so. His lolling grin and galumphing gait rocketed after Moorhen, sped on by what certainly seemed to be a beckoning teasing gaze of her own. His strides were longer than Moorhen's at least, and she didn't really want to escape him right now, did she, especially without watching where she was going... So it was only a few breaths before the gleefully intent Driftwood's steps caught up with her own. His eyes gleamed as he swooped forth and swatted a large paw dressed in a few small clumps of gritty snow towards her, but his real target for the moment was the object dangling from her teeth. Driftwood darted his own jaws down to seize it in a different spot and give it a mighty tug. Never mind that he'd just willingly given the alien device up to her: obviously he was going to make her wrestle with him for it at least a little. He flopped his ears back nearer his skull and rolled his eyes in exaggerated playfulness toward Moorhen—for surely she wasn't just gonna take all this lying down, and the delighted Driftwood was excited to see just what she might try to pull next. Besides the ringy object of mystery, there, in the most literal sense: that was a given.

But bigger than her though Driftwood might be, at least so far as his lanky legs and tall rawboned stature went underneath his winter fluff, she had in fact filled out her frame with muscle in the months since he had first seen her and was rather more solidly built than him. Drift wasn't entirely sure that even if he threw his whole body into the effort he could manage to win this tug-of-war, if she really wanted to keep ahold of the strange object.