Wheeling Gull Isle kiss me like that

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Rokig had disappeared without a word, as had Lainie and Elenor, but most distressing of all was the unannounced absence of Mou. Fires from Elsewhere had filled the sky with a sickly yellow-gray haze and had occasionally sent flickers of ash drifting across the sea, causing the Aralez to ensconce herself in her den with fits of coughing and shortness of breath — and there she mourned the bad news @Stockholm brought home, nursing the worry that she had failed the seawolves so soundly that they would all disperse a second time. There was a disconnect in the pack, and she attributed it wholly to her own shortcomings, which she knew to be boundless. She could not find it within herself to cast blame upon the wolves who left — but she couldn’t understand it, either. What wasn’t she doing enough of?

Her thought process was not, “Aren’t I enough?” but, “I’m not enough, and I don’t know how to fix it.” In the weeks since the air grew thick and smoky and unforgiving, she hadn’t been able to speak at all, and @Reed, Hemlock, Stockholm, and @Moorhen had been doing all the talking to her children. But they didn’t know her stories. They didn’t know anything about the second half of the surname they bore, and maybe Komodo, `Io, and Amoxtli were never coming home, and that was her fault, too.

The sky was clearer and the wind sweeter today, so she stepped out of the Labyrinth, making the snap judgment to take her babies for an outing. She didn’t feel comfortable moving them to a rendezvous den, partially because of the air quality but mostly because of a selfish desire of Coelacanth’s to stay hidden away while she brooded. Maybe interacting positively with some of the remaining seawolves would change her mind, though. She nosed at @Grayling, @Thresher, Koi, and Sixgill and urged them into the sunshine with a soft whuff, shaking out her feathery pelt that had grown dull and dusty with her dip in appetite, activity, and general morale.

Taking a tentatively deep breath, she danced toward a mossy knoll and drank deeply from one of the sweetwater rills that dappled the lush green ground. She was mindful of how close the puppies got to the water’s edge, and her jaws plunged below surface to catch and land a flopping cutthroat trout. Its silver sides flashed vibrantly, revealing the telltale red markings upon its chin, the faint gradation to pale green along its spine, and the pretty freckling that covered it from tip to tail. The sheepdog then sat back upon her haunches to see what her children would do, if anything at all.