Ankyra Sound Mister Doorman, stop teasing, I'm freezing out here

For @Caiaphas, occurring roughly parallel to this hot mess.

The beach was quiet. Too quiet. Normally if she was in the mood for company, she could find Ingram or Arrille doing boyish things along the beach. If she looked hard enough in the forest she could find Lycaon. She generally avoided the grotto, not wanting to encounter the sea witch nor her stony guardian although she liked Kierkegaard enough, and she saw little of Chusi, Ocelot or Nyx. That was mostly her doing. Wylla didn't get along so well with other ladies, especially recently.

Dear Diary: Today, I passed by the tide pools and saw the pretty, smart girl, and fantasized about offering her a new accessory in the form of a tire iron to her dumb blonde face.

Okay, well, that was a little on the melodramatic side of things, but she tended to avoid the other ladies, lest she commit an act against a pack mate that would incriminate her. Wylla certainly didn't need any more of that. However, none of the guys were around to entertain her; the strand was oddly silent and barren, and at length the tiny Alpha female decided to slip into the grotto, quietly praying that she would find solitude there. Instead, she found exactly what she thought she would, and with a dour sigh, made her presence known by stepping directly into the pool that was once used for ceremonial purposes by the Nereides.

a splash in the water caused the sylph's eyes to fly open, their fierce yellow surface already rimed with accusation as she searched for the offender in the dark. there in the illuminant water, touched by a soft stroke of alien blue lighting, was the sound's newest matriarch. caiaphas glanced upon her noncommittally.

she lifted her muzzle from her paws and issued a mighty yawn that curled her thin pink tongue and revealed her arsenal of little sharp teeth. her jaws shut with a click and she chased the last dredges of slumber from her muzzle with a slow shake of her head. in the dim light of the cavern she could not properly interpret wylla's expression -- and even if they were rimed by sunlight, caiaphas was not so sure she would be able to decipher the enigma that was wylla's brooding presence. silently she regarded the gentle ripples in the water before her gaze slid to wylla as if to ask 'what do you want'?

If only Wylla knew about the importance of that pool of water to Caiaphas, she would have splashed around a little more, maybe even pissed in it. She regarded the haggard sea witch across the lowly lit cavern with her expression suspended somewhere between outright distaste and mistrust. This creature had stolen her brother from her and made of him a stranger; what forgiveness was there in her heart for such a wretched thing?

Her gums tugged into a flat line as she stepped out of the pool, shaking her hind legs as she went, and then turned a slow circle to stand facing the former siren queen. Caiaphas looked a lot more menacing in the soft blue glow, but so did Wylla. Maybe. That, or her face was just one big white stripe that disappeared between her ears. How should she know what she looked like? "How does it feel?" Wylla asked with flashing eyes, though she didn't bother to elaborate on her meaning.

caiaphas was unaware of the female's thoughts, but she was wholly indoctrinated to the frosty manner in which wylla addressed her. she suspected somehow that the wolf carried resentment in her heart for her -- perhaps wylla's young brain had been poisoned by lusca, or perhaps the pewter-masked female had come to dislike the siren queen of her own volition. 

she did not move as wylla rose from the pool, dragging a column of water behind her in a dripping flourish. her gaze lifted, an ear pulled back as she considered the question. how did it feel to what? she immediately assumed wylla's query was a barb in light of her recently dethroned status -- but it could have been any manner of things and caiaphas did not know wylla well enough to clearly discern the subtleties of her question.

"how does it feel to what? to subsist here? to not be a leader? to have strangers in my home?" she crossed one thin limb over the other and regarded wylla anew. "if you're going to be an alpha, you need to speak your mind always, girl."

"To lose your station," she clarified, choosing to remain a fair distance across the cavern in case Caiaphas was as volatile as she assumed. She knew nothing of the witch but that she had taken Lycaon away; the woman's craftiness, experience and potential usefulness were all lost on her. She thought of the older wolf as a queen who had fallen reluctantly from her throne, and with it pinned now under Wylla's greedy thumb, she wasn't likely to get it back. Not by anything but force, though this was ignoring the fact that probably the whole pack would rather follow Caiaphas than her, so force wouldn't actually be required.

"I always speak it," Wylla claimed, defensive as her ears crept toward her skull. She thought she was straightforward and insisted as much on the regular. But Caiaphas knew the truth: Wylla was only up front when she had someone to back her up or enough space to turn and run in. Nose to nose, she wasn't likely to be so carelessly brazen, but she mistakenly thought that Caiaphas was too old and infirm to catch her if it came to it, so she was emboldened by the distance between them.

to lose your station. the words echoed down the cavern, losing depth and tenor as they went. caiaphas' sharp gaze fell to wylla, the expression inscrutable. it was a dangerous game wylla employed, and caiaphas returned the bat with an equally calamitous stare: she was well aware wylla could enforce her position at any point, and yet she remained unafraid.

silence seemed to stretch out between them and if it was uncomfortably at all for the siren queen, she did not express it. she was still prone on the ground, one thin arm laced gently over the other -- yet all the same, there was a predatory roughness about her as she considered wylla's words.

after what seemed an interminable amount of time the coywolf rose slowly, her lip wrinkled in a sneer of cold disdain. "you will know, when i come for you." she let the dark words clatter down the empty halls and turned to walk right past wylla, a single ear cupped towards her in case her provocative answer earned her some sort of physically retaliatory punishment.

Oh no she DINNIT, went Wylla's brain as her expression defrosted from coldly sly to outright affronted. No wonder nobody liked this hag except crusty old Kierkegaard, who was probably only around, Wylla thought, because he was more desperate than most teenage boys. She was acidic, rude, insufferable, and deserved to die alone.

Wait, who were we describing again?

She offered no immediate response save for a low growl in her throat, but the offense was evident in every angle of her sharp body as Caiaphas walked past her. At length, by the time the coywolf was nearly departed, Wylla turned and ground out, "then you'll just see how no one wants you," and turned to stalk her own way into another subset of the grotto, where she intended to process the threat and decide what, if anything, needed doing about it.