Ocean's Breath Plateau Salt

@Skellige

This was what she'd been searching for. The budding green promised to carpet the area one day soon, and she'd appreciate that. But for now, she could see the bottom layer of the plateau quite clearly. Rabbit trails and burrow entrances littered the landscape, sometimes widening into gaping caverns at the bases of small, scrubby conifers. As soon as she stepped foot onto the plateau, she was nose-to-the-ground, ears swivelling, Jawbone clutched tightly between her teeth. He caught on some of the brambles around her, but Doe was always quick to untangle him and go on her way.

And suddenly, she was upon it. A dark, narrow opening in the earth - just big enough for Doe to wiggle through. Inside, it took mere seconds for her eyes to adjust, and what she saw - though it was not much - pleased her. Cobbly rock walls, a roof of packed dirt and living roots, and a scent that spoke of rabbits, rabbits, rabbits - but no wolf. She would change that, though.

Doe laid Jawbone carefully on the floor and began to rub herself along the ground and walls, marking the place as her own. Sharp rocks dug into her sides and loosed matted clumps of her unkempt coat, but she carried on. It had to be done.

Finally, when the den stank of her, she gave Jawbone a perfuntory lick - Stay safe, my love - and ventured out alone. Giving chase to the rabbits amounted in nothing more than a cut paw, and she stalked rather sulkily toward the interesting whoosh and crash that she could hear over the cliff. When she reached the edge, she could only stare at the vast, endless expanse of the sea. She sat back on her haunches and breathed in the damp, salty mist that stirred up below her, eyes glazed over as she took it all in.

After a time, she became aware of a cool whisper - and undertone to the ocean's sounds that she hadn't noticed before. "Hail!" she cried, leaping to her feet. "Hail, creature. Greater than me. I can serve you..."

She crept toward the edge of the cliff, mind swirling and tilting, still breathing in salt, listen to me, come in to the water, legs trembling, eyes watering, you will never be alone, she laid down and cried.

[table][tr][td valign=center] [/td][td]

The wraith had thought to search the plateau in hopes that he might be able to pull his mind from the bay; it was still close enough to the water and sat right beside Donnelaith, but there was something about the stretch of land that did not please him in the same sense. The bay had security where the plateau was open and stretching. Skellige had found himself more at home when he was nestled securely between the great stone cliffs that housed Stavanger. In the wide stretch of land, though, he could see the opportunity for small prey that they would not have directly on the ocean side.
 
Breathing deeply, the brute could taste the brine in the air, and it seemed to calm his flustered nerves. Time was running short; if Ksenia was in the area, she must have had a plan. The white wench would not have abandoned her throne on Warsaw without the promise of something more.
 
The length of his legs carried him quite easily across the rolling flatland, but his eyes did not find anything that drew his heart into a wild thrum. The shoreline was too far, and his only means of reaching it would be to leap from the cliffs that stretched along the edges of the plateau. Though the wraith had often contemplated life on the jagged terrain, he knew that he was far more capable within the waves than he was on the sharp drops of the cliffside.
 
In his moments of contemplation, the wraith found his ears drawn forward by the sound of a woman crying into the saline breeze. His brows knitted tightly across his dark eyes and he turned his crown in her direction to see if she were crazed or merely professing a verbal love to the waters. The woman that he saw did appear… amiss in some aspect. He leered at her with a curious expression on his dark face before he turned his thick frame in her direction and lumbered slowly towards her. Skellige’s head was held low and his dark gaze was trained on her body. Should she decide to spring, his limbs would be prepared.
 
Almost without warning or reason, the creature slumped to the earth and began to sob. Lifting his head upward and canting it just to the left, the great dark titan frowned at her with a sense of disappointment, though he could not understand why he felt this.
 
“Why do you weep before the sea?” he inquired to her in a rumbling baritone; there was a spark of curiosity in the mahogany of his gaze.

[/td][td valign=center] [/td][/tr][/table]

Her ever-swivelling ears picked up the sound of his footsteps long before he called to her. But at the sound of his voice, his presence seemed to jarr her from her sorrow. Abruptly, she was silent, and without standing or moving much at all, she craned her head back and around to get a look at the stranger. Large, with a dark pelt. The kind of eyes that eat you.

"He called me," replied the shewolf with a whine, her voice more a coyote's yap than a wolf's brogue. The more she peered at the stranger, the more she realized she was not properly reacting; and a moment later, his presence seemed to register once again. She spun around at once, still slow to the ground, but crouching ready instead of lying. "Hail," she greeted, belatedly, her mouth opening wide in a nervous gape. Another bad, bad coyote habit. She snapped her jaws shut and bristled silently for a moment, unsure whether she was afraid or happy.

"Hail," she said again, confused, now. Her ears twisted this way and that as she tried to remember what they were talking about. "He whispered to me, sir. He told me to come into the water. I should not have left. I never meant to go so far away...."

Who was she talking to? She looked around, and saw only Riverbone. "But I won't leave again," she promised her alpha, making herself low. "I promise. I'll do whatever you say."

[table][tr][td valign=center] [/td][td]

The wiry woman spoke of an unknown man who had called her, and Skellige frowned at the prospect of another male having breached so closely to the land he had sought to claim. The plateau sat just on the other side of the bay, but was close enough to Donnelaith that it caused the wraith’s skin to prick with unease. He thought for a moment of the pearl of the forest… Deirdre, and his chest tightened. When the light struck the woman’s gaze once more, all former unease disappeared. There was a wildness there that he found familiar and almost calming.
 
The Witch Doctors of Warsaw were vile little creatures with powerful spirits on their sides. The witch who had blessed Skellige with the spirit of the great white had been one of the oldest and fiercest of her kind; she wore the skulls of several fallen victims around her throat and dressed her skull in plants from the sea. Though this stranger on the cliffs was foreign to him, the flash of her gaze and the way in which she spoke reminded him of the strange ways of his home land.
 
Fixing her with his dark eyes, the wraith lifted his crown and reeled the leather of his lips over his sharp canines. “He spoke to you,” the beast echoed with furrowed brows. Flicking his ears forward, the great titan frowned and titled his head ever so slightly to the left. Perhaps it had been the spirits that those witches had spoken so fondly of who had called this woman to their clutches. They had spoken many times of destiny and the ways of the sea, but he had never been privy to such information. This moment felt as though it was a sign.
 
“You answered the call, witch doctor. They have sent you to me,” he spoke and the timbre of his voice seemed to shake the air around him. There was a light in his gaze that had not been there before; a hunger that felt akin to his homeland and the terror that had ensued there. Drawing himself closer to the female, the brute breathed in her scent and was surprised that it did not carry the sharp tang of the ocean. Perhaps she was a fledgling.
 
Drawing his coral-colored tongue across his lips and muzzle, the wraith loomed over her with an inspecting eye. “Have you any alliances, doctor?” he inquired with a single quirked brow. If she was not a sign, then she was certainly a test, and he would not fail this time.

[/td][td valign=center] [/td][/tr][/table]

Riverbone's antics confused her. There was a darkness in his gaze that she'd never felt from her alpha before, and gone was the loving, fatherly affection that she was used to receiving from him. He must be mad at me. For running away from him. The thought made her chest burn while her blood turned icy in her veins. He had never been angry with her before - she'd always been the child of his heart, if not that of his blood. All his children had been sons, and he had loved her like a precious gift from the day of her birth.

She stared hard at the man, fearful but unblinking. What would he do to her?

But she needn't have worried. Soon enough, he came near to her as he always had, and she gave a sigh of relief as she sank down before him. He's forgiven me. I'm safe again.

"Have you any alliances, doctor?" he asked, and Doctor gazed up at him, slack-jawed. He had certainly changed. Perhaps he was not Riverbone anymore. He didn't smell the same, hardly looked the same, and acted very differently. Did he remember her at all?

"You know them all, Appeh," she said gently, trying to help him remember. "I belonged to you in the dry lands before this place, and here - you've come to claim me again." Didn't he know this? Why else would he have come to these lands, and without her brother, her mother, his wife and his sons?

This was clearly a different wolf - not her appeh. He'd come different to these lands, as she had, and no longer knew the wolf he'd been in the dry lands where he'd been her king. "You do not have these memories," Doctor said to him, realizing her mistake. "What shall I call you now?"

[table][tr][td valign=center] [/td][td]

It took a long moment for the salty brute to realize that this wild woman had mistaken him for someone that she had known. When she shied away from the anger in his voice and the lash of his tongue, he blinked at her out of confusion and attempted to adjust himself by taking a quaking step backwards and huffing a snort through his nares. Surely the sea had sent her to him. The look on her face and the glint in her gaze suggested that she had been forged by the ways of the sea. There was a fearful expression there, though. Skellige was suddenly quite baffled by her existence, and he was attempting to work his way through it mentally.
 
The woman spoke to him as though she were trying to coax memories from the far reaches of his mind. He knew they were not there, but she spoke with such certainty that he was beginning to doubt himself. The name that was uttered from her lips was not at all familiar to him, and he shook his head from side to side to demonstrate that she did not know who she was speaking to. Never would he have dwelled in a dry land. But, somehow, he found himself too base to use his words.
 
Confusion had found both of them, but realization had found her first. It was almost a sad expression that had crossed her features once she knew that he was not the man she had referred to before. The great hulking wraith was not her Appeh. Still, she inquired as to what she was to call him, and the sea king did not have words. Some part of him was still attempting to conjure the memories that she spoke of. If the sea had provided him with his witch, surely she would not speak to him of nonsense and lies.
 
Forcing the thought from his mind, the brute shook his skull and breathed deeply in the saline that filled the air around them. That was his certainty: the salt on the ocean wind. Once he was grounded, he peered at her once again with rich eyes.
 
“Skellige,” he uttered his name. “And what will I call you?”

[/td][td valign=center] [/td][/tr][/table]

Her heart broke at the shake of his head, and she knew that she must no longer call him her appeh. This new wolf was not her father - had no memories of being her father. Still, she knew that Riverbone lived in him, as... whoever she was still lived in her. They just had new names, now, and a new home. New bonds still needing to be forged.

She gazed at the dark wolf with tender eyes, remembering all he had been in her childhood, and all that he had done for her. He remembered his kind words as he had explained her parentage, and that although you were not born to me, my heart is filled with love. One day, I will make you bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. At the time, she hadn't undertstood how literally he meant it, or that they would have to travel far from their homeland and put on different faces in order to see the day. Doctor wondered if she looked very different from how she had as a pup, and then decided that it did not matter. They had found each other, and the time had come to forge a new union between them. She would be all that he asked of her, that he might one day remember their love.

Doctor drew herself up, standing proudly before the man who had been her father, and who was now someone else. "It is as you say, Skellige," she intoned, grateful that he'd already given her a name, so that she did not have to think of one herself. "You will call me Doctor."

She stood at ready, still watching him with deep and earnest affection, trust, love. I will follow you all my days, said her eyes, and her heart was singing even while she stilled her tongue. For once, her ears stood straight and level, pointing attentively toward the wolf no longer named Riverbone - for he was no longer the dry remains where water once flowed. He was something more, something better - and she would be, too.

[table][tr][td valign=center] [/td][td]

While neither of these wolves knew each other, they had each found something that made them feel a sort of comfort. While he had reminded her of a man she had considered a fatherly figure, she had reminded him of the wild-eyed witches of his home. Though the doctors had always had a strange way about them, and had been prone to mystic ways that he could not fully comprehend, Skellige had always shared a reverence for them. Although the wraith may not have been capable of giving the small female the relationship she had sought, he would give her a home because she had been called to the ocean and he had been the one to find her there. It was destined.
 
The girl did not give him a name, and prompted him to call her Doctor. Furrowing his brows once more, the dark brute resigned to accept this and nodded his head. “Very well,” he spoke softly, eyes trailing her features once again to be certain of himself and his decision. He could not ignore this sign; they had taught him to be careful of the mystics and the manner in which they presented things to him. There could be no doubt that this woman would help him in his time of need.
 
“We will go to the bay, Witch Doctor,” he explained to her, drawing his muzzle upward in the direction they intended to travel. Though he did not like not knowing this woman’s calling, he supposed that all of the witches on Warsaw had obtained new names from the mystics after they had become fully fledged. This wiry girl could be the same. For the time being, Skellige would not fuss with her name, and would simply call her by her role.
 
Motioning for the girl to follow him in the direction of the bay, the brute swung his head around to meet her and he drew his ears forward. “I will need you to bless our new home. We need to know that the sea protects us,” his voice rumbled to her. With all of the other packs who resided in the wilds, the titan knew that he needed to be careful; should they come to his doorstep, he would need the sea to support him and those who followed him.
 
Pausing for a moment, he locked the russet of his eyes with her own and he allowed the wind to sift through the great tufts of his inky pelt. “Do you need to collect anything before we go?” the sea king asked of her. If the witch had medicinal herbs or plants to commune with those from the beyond, he would not want her to leave them behind.

[/td][td valign=center] [/td][/tr][/table]

It was only when he asked that Doctor remembered Shink. Her blood turned icy for a moment as thoughts of losing him passed through her mind, but even that didn't seem so terrible in light of finding Riverbone (Skellige, she reminded herself, rather more firm than she usually would be on such things). Still, she bounded off toward her den, dashing in a quick circle and yapping her happy abandon before leaving her alpha's sight. It was much quicker to get back to the den than it had been going there, as she wasn't tracking any scent or sneaking into warrens along the way.

Doctor reached her haunt in record time - not even a minute - and wriggled through the narrow opening. Shink was right where she'd left him - "What a good puppy!" - in the center of the den, and Doctor scooped him up without another thought.

It was on the way back - trotting more slowly to account for Shink's unwieldiness - that she realized she did not know much about blessing things and much less about the sea. She'd never even seen the ocean before today, though she'd heard stories about it since leaving her red-painted home. How would she live up to Skellige's expectations? Would he throw her away if she could not bless their home?

I'll just talk to him, and ask him really nicely, she thought, thinking about his friendly whisper, his pretty blue currents. He was so comforting when he spoke to me before - he surely doesn't want to see anything happen to me, now.

Thus convinced that it wouldn't be a problem, Doctor popped out of the brush once more where she'd left her alpha, and fell into obedient step just behind him. We're going home, she thought to herself, her whole body wiggling with the force of her joy. He's taking me to our home. But there would be time for celebration later on. For now, she schooled her posture into attention to show her readiness to depart. The sooner they got there, the better.

I'm going to archive this and just move on to our new thread(s). <3

[table][tr][td valign=center] [/td][td]

It was not until he had mentioned the premise of collecting any of her things that the wiry woman sprung to life and turned away from his inky frame, darting to a place he did not care to follow. Instead, he watched with a placid expression as she darted towards a hiding hole of her making.
 
After she had been gone for some time, the brute wondered how long he should wait for her. The breeze that ruffled through his pelt and played with the silver along his ribs was rich with the scents of the ocean, and he longed to be back in her sands where he knew that he was not at harm. The openness of the plateau was something that brought a prickling sensation to his skin, and inadvertently lifted the fur along his neck and spine.
 
When the Witch Doctor came trotting back, clasping a lower jawbone in her mouth, the wraith eyed her with a cautious glance and waited for her to reach where he stood. There were certain things about the wild girl that spoke to the nature of the doctors of his home. The Leviathan breathed in the scent of her and concluded that she had not been near the sea for very long. She only must have just arrived for him. It had not been the jaw bone that had surprised him, but the lack of other treasures. The witches of Warsaw had adorned their necks with an array of bones and trinkets that had come from the fallen. This girl would get more if she was as capable as he imagined.
 
Without another word, the inky titan turned his body to face the direction of the bay and he began their journey back. Skellige did not imagine he would have to command her to follow; she appeared eager enough to remain at his side, which was good for her line of work. The doctors who had attended to him on the islands of his upbringing had remained beside him for a great duration of his life. They did well to keep him alive and blessed at all times.
 
The bay would prove a good home for the girl. While Skellige was not aware that she knew nothing about blessings of the ocean or what the mystics were, his blind faith in her would allow for plenty of wiggle room. The ways of the Witch Doctors had been relatively foreign to him, save for their rituals of the pack. When that time came, if she did not know how to speak to the ancients, he would have to call on help. Until then, she could learn at his side.

[/td][td valign=center] [/td][/tr][/table]