Sea Lion Shores danger close

Time seemed to slow. He was looking at her and - gosh, she'd forgotten the color of his eyes. Gold, not mahogany. Not cool, winter green. Gold. And he was smaller than she remembered. Not the pillar of salt that had stood guard over her den. Not the behemoth that had lifted her in his jaws and carried her to safety. She remembered his warm body in the cave by the sea, the waves beating like a heartbeat against the rocks and echoing all around them. He'd smelled like salt and green sea creatures, and he'd been a bay of warm, gentle waters whenever the tidal wave that was Doe receded.

He looked at her and said, "You." And his voice was different, she thought, but she did not react beyond a faint flick of her ears, still shocked by his sudden reappearance. Seeing him here was different than reuniting with Isengrim. Different from meeting her brother. Those meetings had not swept the air out of her lungs this way, had not left her aching for the childhood that had never been, that could never have been. Her eyes traced the dark bands on his ribcage and she wanted - desperately, inanly, terribly - to go back. Back to the stone den. Back to Doe's wrath. Back to a cold winter and bony fish few and far between and Isen pulling on her ears until she should have cried but didn't, because seashells did not cry. Mostly, she wanted to go back to being small and warm against Szymon's pale chest, if only for a few seconds. Just so she could remember being safe and protected and loved and absolutely nothing else. Not a seashell. Not a wife. Not Ahklut.

But he was looking at her - No, the sea lions. And he said Hunt, not I will protect or We will warm as she had said to Redcliff, and Moorhen remembered that she was not a child. She was a woman, and she was a protector, and those times of being small and safe and precious were far behind her. The reminder made her want to fold in on herself for a moment, to weep and mourn for all the lost time and might-have-beens, but she'd been bearing up to these realities for so long, now.

Reluctantly, she pulled her eyes away from her uncle and scanned the masses of sea lions once more. They'd stopped paying attention to the wolves when it was clear they were focused on each other, but a few cast wary looks in their direction, now. Moorhen's stomach grumbled at the idea of sharing one of the pups with another wolf, so she pointed out a slim, streamlined juvenile on its way into adulthood. Likely too much for her to take on by herself, but perhaps just small enough to be overpowered between the two of him. "It?" she suggested, pointing her nose toward the outlier. It hadn't noticed them yet.