peace will win and fear will lose

Setting: Wheeling Gull Isle, dusk.
OOC: Jinx is being weird and religious. Interrupt at your own risk!

IC: As the sun's lower edge flirted with the western horizon and filled the sky with streamers of pink and orange light, a pale female wolf surfaced from beneath the waves. In her wake, a stream of blood dissipated, teased away by the ebb and pull of the sea from the decapitated head clutched in strong jaws. Her paws found purchase on the silty ocean bottom leading in a slant onto the island, and as she struggled free of the chill water, she shook herself violently to shed the cold.

As she hauled her prize onto the shore, diluted blood flowed into the fur of her throat and chest, painting her with a macabre bib to mark her as Sos'. Crow Moon was coming — or had come — and soon Sos would walk the mortal forests to devour the souls of those wolves who had not appeased him with offerings and service. Jinx Kesuk knew she had done well this year, and had nothing to fear from him, but this last act would secure her continued life, at least until next Crow Moon.

She walked along the grassy coast of Wheeling Gull Isle, whose residents — the gulls for whom it was so aptly named — were eerily absent. Perhaps it was the stillness of the air, and the primal knowledge that soon the Lord of Souls would walk amongst them, as even lesser beings weren't safe from his wrath, that kept them from sight. Jinx wasn't concerned; the silence was comforting, and she preferred to do this sort of thing alone, in private.

She came upon her site of ritual: a roughly pyramidal pile of stones, carefully compiled in the last few days, with seaweed draped ceremonially over the upper tiers of the stone pyramid. Around its base, Jinx had left shreds of white oak bark, equally spaced between six oceanic fish heads whose bodies, once the heads had been removed, had been dutifully deposited into Horizon Ridge's cache. Jinx had also been fortunate enough to find an octopus washed up on the island when she first had come to it, albeit it was missing a few of its octet of legs; this she had propped against the base of the shrine facing the setting sun.

The severed head she brought would complete her shrine to Sos. It was the head of a seal, small, but not a pup — the pups were not born. This seal had been a malnourished female harbouring some illness that would have claimed her life eventually; Jinx had simply done it sooner. The body she had left on the beach where the seals gathered, having no use for it and no means to return it to her pack's lands. No doubt it was crawling with scavengers already. Using all the strength in her neck and all the balance in her toes, Jinx hoisted the head up and placed it carefully on the very top of the pile of rocks, as though the shrine would serve as its new body.

This done, she stepped back to lower herself into a sphinx position with her head bowed, and began mumbling words of praise and prayer to her god as darkness settled over her.