Stavanger Bay caught between heart and hemorrhage

@Syzmon

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Qilaq makes a second effort to approach the den shared by Rannoch and their leader. The first attempt had been interrupted and she didn’t get as good of a look as she’d like. Still, she hasn’t been able to find him in the last several days and she isn’t sure she knows what to do with it. She creeps up slowly, noting the less intensity of Skellige’s scent, and the even lesser present scent of her friend. A frown twists upon her features and she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and continues a little closer.
 
“Ra-Rannoch?” she calls out, struggling to get her lips around his name. She swallows hard, partially hoping him not to be there to hear it but when she is met with nothing but silence, she knows it to be true. A stinging makes itself known behind her eyes and her vision clouds, still taking another step closer enough that she sees in the remaining light, the shell she’d given him some time ago. Her jaw tightens, grinding her teeth together in misplacement of something that feels far too close to anger.
 
She is about to turn from the den but her pale eyes find the gift again, and without a second thought, she quickly moves forward to scoop it away and run. Qilaq takes the direction easiest to escape from until she finds an area of her home that is familiar to her and she’s able to redirect and make her way to the den in the ground. She takes long breaths as she slows to a stop and nearly drops herself in the den, letting the shell fall from her mouth to the den floor. Her breaths become far more ragged and difficult to draw, shifting a little more comfortably in the den that smells only of her now—the remnants of her parents scent have been long gone—and tries to find comfort in the time alone.
 
Eventually, the girl falls asleep with the shell between her paws and her nose draped across and pressed into the sand.

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