Wheeling Gull Isle if only time flew like a dove

The foreign object went wafting gently down to the sands where it huddled in a lump. Perhaps it sat there in relief, perhaps it simply needed to slump there for a minute or two to recuperate from its recent ordeals. Perhaps it was put out at having missed its opportunity to strike and take down the Moorhen who'd held it. At any rate, Driftwood hardly paid it any mind beyond being a little surprised that Moorhen had just up and dropped it as well: Mwrff fween mphhffrfmrr mwyt? he said. Which even Driftwood realized was a less than helpful query, here, but frankly he wasn't about to give up his grip in order to get his questions answered—they all tended to be dumb and lame and get everyone stuck in conversational dead ends anyway. The tail was trying to get away from him but he wouldn't let it. He didn't want to actually hurt Moorhen, mind you, but he did dig his teeth in to the fur padding her tailbones just a little deeper, making sure he'd be as hard to shake as possible. Moorhen might just have to go through the rest of life with a big clumsy Driftwood-shaped tail ring at this point, it seemed.

Except that she gave as good as she got. Driftwood was too intent on making his own toothhold secure, so that he was paying rather less attention than he should to where his own caudal vertebrae were swinging about; the unsupervised tail was accosted by his ranking superior, as Driftwood's yelp of surprise was muffled by Moorhen's own tail. Driftwood rolled his eyes about as the girl's tailtip flopped repeatedly into his field of vision and obscured his getting a better eyeful of what she was doing to the appendage protruding from his own rump. He still wouldn't let go, though, not for anything, and so when Moorhen braced herself against the earth and started pulling sideways that left Driftwood with few options besides to go along. Moorhen kept trying to jerk her own tail free, but goofy grinning Driftwood wasn't having any of it and only tried to wag all the harder, his own tail's escape attempts pathetic and halfhearted indeed. In fact, not at all loath to let her keep her mouthful, he used the awkward circle they'd created to try to take one much bigger stride closer, into the center where he'd inevitably be as close to Moorhen as her next exhaled breath— but in paying more attention to the tail-wrangling than to where his feet were going, naturally this meant Driftwood stepped directly in the remnants of the salmon. Out from under him went the one foot, which meant the other shoulder skewed sideways and pulled him off-balance and sent him careening straight for Moorhen, and right down toward the cold creeping tide now incoming just beyond her, for that matter.

Now his grip on her tail finally loosened in shock. Driftwood gasped as the close-by ocean spray that seemed comprised of sheer ice went plowing halfway up his foreleg. He jerked that leg back, and then belatedly recalled himself just enough to make another wild flailing snatch of teeth at Moorhen's tail, hopefully before it flew out of reach entirely—hey, no fair, get back here! Just when he'd thought maybe he'd managed to maneuver himself to where he might be "winning" this encounter at last, too, sheesh.