Shimmering Sands Could be happy

She probably looked like quite a sight: a young she-wolf trotting along a spit of sand, an otter wound around her neck, his hindquarters nestled in the cradle of her shifting shoulder blades, both their bellies distended. Q and Frolic had enjoyed quite the feast of fish about thirty minutes ago, so she moved more slowly than usual, which gave her a good opportunity to take in her surroundings. The beach reminded her of home, of course: all three of them. Q had been born on one coastline, grown up on another and now pledged allegiance to Seabolt, a pack which called an island its headquarters.

Q was far from that particular home at the moment and, totally unbeknownst to her, quite close to her birthplace. Even if she hadn't been very young when departing Stormrift, she likely wouldn't have remembered the bay. She had taken a kick to the head during her first pack hunt back at Warsaw. She had made a full recovery, except for the part where most of her childhood memories were wispy at best and she sometimes suffered from absolutely excruciating and debilitating headaches. There were other symptoms on occasion, though Q did her best to ignore their existence.

Just now, nothing hurt, except perhaps her overfilled stomach. Abruptly, Q came to a stop, jostling Frolic in his makeshift saddle. The otter loosened his grip on the side of her neck and dropped to the sand even as the she-wolf produced a burp loud enough to startle a nearby flock of seagulls into flight. Wolf and otter both tipped their heads upward to watch them, though the former suddenly noticed a black figure in the distance beyond the wheeling, cawing gulls and said to her companion, "Do you dare me to run up and throw that"—Q pointed out a dead jellyfish near the edge of the surf—"at his head?"