Stavanger Bay from whence i see no reason why

@Raptor, if/when you have time <3

the sea, and from the edge of the shoreline, a low cliff. erzulie stood at its edge, the wind whispering through her honeycream withers. trepidation beat in her heart, but a shoreline whore had been the fiercest mentor in her young life; erzulie recalled her face. marie — princesse des mille colombes was what the harlot had called the only one to know the secret desire of her heart. marie, who spoke only french, insisting it was the language of love, and that erzulie must know it. marie, who had taken the child beneath her pearly wing in twa bouch and fed her, and given her a place to learn the only trade that mattered. sparrow, listen to me, the angel had told her charge, the first night erzulie had laid beside her. the first night in so many that the girl remembered roux's embrace, and had cried into the plush snow of marie's fur. we must toil in this world so very hard. hunger and suffering, and death — we are not above these things. but glean pleasure from your life, and by that, enjoyment. there is no wisdom in going hungry when there are things to eat.
erzulie breathed the salt air, and here she arced into the grey air, a small dive and one that plunged her beneath the surface with a cry and a choking exhale when she surfaced again, instinctually clawing beneath the darkness and lifting her muzzle from the brine. a stupid thing she had done — else there was a chance she would not have entered the sea.

Raptor nosed at his shoulder. The wounds there were still raw as were the gouges she had left in his snout. The wolf pawed at his face with a groan that protested the stinging and itching that accosted him, and the bodily ache that had set deep into his muscles and bones.

Exhausted, he directed himself toward the sea hopeful that he could do something about another of his woes: her scent. His fur seemed steeped in it... and he could not banish the memory of his chained failures so long as it was there, wrapping around his nose and reminding him. In reality, her scent had faded considerably. It was detectable but not as pungent as Raptor believed it to be as he hurried to the shore to soak himself in the brine and roll in seaweed to mask it.

He arrived in time to see a cinnamon-furred wolf leap from a cliff's edge and to hear her cry. "Piper!" He shouted, mistaking the unfamiliar wolf for his companion in his tremendous weariness. Raptor clamored over stone and sand and pitched himself into the ocean without thought, blind with panic as he powered through the waves, seeking the wolf's scruff to drag her ashore.

a cry above the lash of the waves; erzulie could not make out what was said, so focused she was on ensuring she did not slip beneath the waves again. a shock of cold brinewater lapped roughly against her lips; erzulie threw back her head in a jerk, her body colliding with a solid figure.
her mind screamed it was a sea-monster, one of the horrid things that roiled in the deep. erzulie flushed with terror, and then an irate resignation, arcing her body away from whatever it was.
wolfs'-teeth in her nape; erzulie's teeth bared beneath the water instinctively, but knew she must not fight. the harlot attempted to relax as best she could, feeling herself towed toward the shoreline and knowing she would perhaps live after such a foolish mistake.

He brought her ashore, releasing her scruff to pant from the exertion and panic. Raptor was a wolf of the sea and a proficient swimmer accustomed to the thrash and roll of the waves, but buoying the weight of another wolf to the sand still required more energy than he had to spare. He dropped to his rear beside her and bent his head to sniff with concern at his companion... only to then realize this was not Sandpiper at all and not even someone he knew.

Raptor scrabbled to his paws and sprung backwards, soaking wet and dripping as he had not even mustered the will to shake his coat. His eyes flashed with offense and then darkened along with the rest of his expression as self-deprecating thoughts seized his mind. Then all the spark of life left him, breathed out in long sigh as he dropped unceremoniously to his haunches again. His head hung below his shoulders as he stared vacantly at this unfamiliar female.

"why you offended, boy?" erzulie growled in a throated trill, ears fitted against her skull as she drew her dripping pelt away from the somber male. tongue emerging from her jaws, the she-wolf began to lick the saltwater from her limbs, pausing ever so often to peer at her savior. he crouched like a gargoyle nearby — erzulie lifted her honeyed muzzle to regard the man in silence.
sable-furred and long-limbed, the wolf cut a commanding figure even in his consternation. the sea ran in rivulets along her cheeks; the swab considered this was perhaps another ironsea leader, and let out her breath in a wry chuff. erzulie did not entertain such notions that he would open to her, but there was no longer such a thing as a wasted chance in her world. "it be in yo' favor dat i am able to clear such t'oughts from yo' head." her voice only hinted at suggestion; if he would but turn, the full breadth of her subtext would rest in the mint-glow gaze she had placed full upon him.

Her suggestion flew over his head like a small plover flushed from the beach grass, even as the tragedy in his eyes met the lucid shine in her own. He answered her stupidly. "I ain't offended, and there ain't nothin' ye can do about what I am." The wolf ground his toes into the sand, his stricken energy plied against the very shores he no longer felt worthy of. "Or what I ain't," he added with a sneer and an anxious flick of his tongue against his nose.

Raptor rose to leave then, turning on his heels as anger and grief dripped off him the same as the as the seawater did. But he got no further than a pace and half before he spun back around, ears flung forward in defiance of everything but the bystander he had plucked from the ocean. "I thought ye were someone else!" He blurted out, unable to pin his tongue behind his teeth as he wrestled with his destruction. "Because I... and because you... Because..." and as he stammered and growled and huffed and groped blindly for an explanation, his face twisted and contorted into countless troubled expressions.

Finally, sucking in a shaky breath through clenched teeth, he summed up his anguish.

"Because... BECAUSE I SUCK!"

erzulie regarded both the savage boy and his outburst with an unruffled implacabilty she had only attained through her many experiences with men — within her chest, her heart beat its wings wildly at such a show, one that could have left her maimed or worse. quietly, the woman continued to preen droplets of saltwater from her chai-tea pelt, letting out her breath in a sigh. the boy was warped in this moment with emotions for which he had no name; erzulie knew her skills of persuasion were of no use to her now.
laying a small paw along her plume, the harlot smoothed wet sand from its honeyed hairs and turned her mintfire gaze upon the boy. "it was you who be da reason i am alive in dis moment, child," erzulie observed in a warmer tone. perhaps he was plagued by love; perhaps he had committed murder; perhaps he only could feel hatred for himself in this moment. "tell me why it is you t'ink you suck."

Ordinarily, Raptor would have been quite pleased with himself to have rescued this wolf from drowning, and to hear her say that he had. Not this time. Her comment barely brought a twitch to his lips as he curiously watched her groom and wondered who she was, where she had come from, and why she gave the least bit of a hoot about him and his suckage.

It occurred to him that he ought to be pressing her for answers. She was a strange wolf on his ship, and he was the Quartermaster. But he hadn't the energy to tend to his duties. His days were numbered, he believed, and so he sat on his rump with a huff of obvious resignation. His emotional outburst had left him feeling even more tired.

"Stuck my dick somewhere it didn't belong." He answered suddenly, matter-of-factly. But then he laughed, this exhausted, disbelieving, laugh. "I suck so hard I screwed someone I was trying to kill. Who does that — oh, and then! Then I tell this to some pretty wolf I don't even know." Raptor snorted.

"There are no ways I don't suck."

And that was that.

the young man sat down with an outflung breath, and erzulie slanted her muzzle to regard him further. at this distance, she could see the handsome cast to his roughshod features. and his next words confirmed 'twas love that had set him so wretchedly at her side. erzulie listened until he had finished; she tapped her chai-cream plume with a small forepaw, giving an amused smirk at his praise.
"someone you were tryin' to kill," the harlot repeated. "but you did not kill her — you took her instead." a vaguely knowing light entered her eyes; she wondered if he would correct her assumption it was a she-wolf who had chastised him so. "dis pretty stranger would like to know if you have made amends wid dis woman who you left alive."

Raptor looked upon that light in her eyes but could not understand what it was she knew that he did not. She was the same age as him but somehow seemed years wiser, and it made him feel as young and as small and stupid as a whelp. Not that he wasn't already feeling like that.

"Ha, amends," he scoffed, rubbing his wrist across his nose. "I don't even know her name. I—" the story died in his mouth as soon as it tried to spring off his tongue. It tasted like death too. It was so unfathomably foolish, and it became even more so the more he thought of it and the more he spoke of it. Raptor shook his head, raising and swiping paw in the air in a forget it gesture.

"Why do you care anyway? Who are you?"

years spent with men had taught erzulie of their ways — she was both lofty in their company, and rather frayed of nerve. with this man, however, she was neither; the lap of the sea nearby, ever-present, steadied the harlot in ways she would not perhaps have been. "erzulie," offered the spice-flecked woman, noting how he had cut off the story.
"i am new to ironsea. the captain and rosalyn brought me aboard, as dey say." she laughed, a brief rich sound that faded almost as soon as it had come. "and you be ...?" erzulie did not recall having seen him before, but by the loa that had brought them near to one another, she wished to know him. "an' i care for de pain of my companions. it is the right way."

"Ahh," Raptor breathed in acknowledgement. He tightened the slack in his jaw and pursed his lip as she asked who he was. For a moment he just looked upon her face as she expressed a care in her companions. He doubted the genuineness in the sentiment, even as he could detect no ruse in her tone. He had simply not known anyone to care without ulterior motive.

"I'm Raptor." It sounded wrong. That was his name. The name he had told everyone he had earned for some feat as a pup. But he could taste the lie now. "I'm supposed to be the Quartermaster here but... you don't even know who I am and I don't know you and that about says it all don't it?"

erzulie shook her small dark-masked head, glancing skyward. "all it be meanin' is dat you have had much on your mind, raptah." the harlot was not often given over to the coddling of men, but this boy's clear pain had cut through the swab, for she remembered what had happened when marie —
"have you eaten?" erzulie inquired in the next moment, unfurling herself from her seated position. small, precise steps carried the woman in confident strides away from the male, but she paused with curled forepaw to see if he would follow. a walk, a few breaths of fresh, brine-swept air — perhaps raptor's spirits could still be lifted.

He squinted at her as she asked if he had eaten. Once again she seemed more knowing than she ought to have been. He had not been hungry, his appetite had been devoured by grief, but somehow it returned at once and he had to force the tiny wag in his tail to be still. Reluctantly, he bobbed his head, "yeah..." and picked himself up to follow her.

Fade here? I need to tidy up some old threads and make room for new ones. Feel free to post again or archive as is.