Stavanger Bay and the future of your child

sandpiper had been casually strolling along the perimeter of stavanger bay when she came across @Smokestep's tracks, which laced intricately in and out like lattice-work along the ground. curious as to what her brother was doing, she traipsed after him at a jaunty trot.

 it took a few tries before she successfully tracked him down; his meanderings went back and forth in the most confounding of manners, and as she drew up alongside him she could see concentration writ across his brow. her lanky tail strung out behind her, she hailed him with a soft huff of breath as if his wanderings had been incredibly inconvenient for her.

The chuff of his sister caused him to turn with a spreading smirk and a glint in his gaze that was pleased to see her. His tail flagged behind him and he waited for her to draw closer before butting his head against her shoulder affectionately. “Piper… wot have ye been up to?” the ruffian inquired as he pulled away from the golden pelt of his sister. His eyes roamed her features for a moment before he fixed them on the sands. Surely, the headstrong young Cairn was off collecting her dues from any who had done her wrong, or so he had imagined. Of course, Smokestep then felt as though he hadn’t gotten enough time with his sister and that he had devoted far too much of it to socializing with his crew. He fretted that she would distance herself but was grateful for her presence.

sandpiper slowed to a halt as smokestep saw her, her tail brushing each hock in a slow wag as he pulled towards her and gently buffeted her with a pale skull. she brought her head down in a reciprocating manner, and studied him for a moment before speaking.

"the usual. patrolling, yelling at birds. trying to figure out what you've been up to." there was a bemused yet suspicious glint to her eye -- she wondered if because it was spring, smokestep was feeling his oats. perhaps the women in his crew had not garnered attraction or favor from him, and he had elected to set sail outside of their realm. either way, she was curious to hear what he had been busying himself with, as it had been some time since their last one on one interaction.

Sandpiper didn’t seem as though she was nearly as bent out of shape as she had been when Rosalyn had taken her place. Smokestep was grateful that she had simmered down, but he would always fret for his sister and wish the very best for her. She would always be the one companion that he could rely on in difficult times. In the past, the Cairn bloodline had not been drawn together. Kin had never really been important to the other wolves of Warsaw. While the young Captain still had Moorhen and Redshank out there somewhere, Sandpiper would always be his closest.
 
While she might have imagined him running off with the women of the crew, or outside the crew, Kingfisher was far from that realm of enjoyment. He breathed a weighted sigh and shook his head at her. It was clear that the pirate was troubled, but his own emotions were misplaced in his ability to communicate well. “I’ve been tryin’ to keep the crew together, y’know,” he confessed to her. “I think we’ve lost some o’ the swabs. Dunno wot I’m doin’ wrong to ‘em.”

while smokestep's mind was on his family -- or rather, the only family that really mattered (her, of course), sandpiper's mind replayed like a record over all the women she didn't like in ironsea. so basically, all of them. she thought with a certain smugness that it was befitting none of them were good enough for smokestep -- truth be told, it was unlikely any other wolf was good enough for her brother either.

in her eyes, anyway. the only eyes that mattered.

her attention was drawn back as smokestep admitted his woes -- wow, was she egregiously off base. she rounded her shoulders and bit her lip with a frown, considering his words with a certain composed reticence. in truth, she hadn't really noticed any specific absence -- but now that smokestep mentioned it, she found herself wondering who had abandoned the front.

"can't help yellowbellied curs." she said with an air of grave dignity, as if all wolves were beneath her. certainly, all wolves were beneath cairns. "you aren't doing anything wrong to them... yet. want to take a look-see, see if any of our old friends found better haunts?"

At first, Smokestep was not certain if he had told his sister about the deserters because he expected her to want to do something about it, or because he needed a sounding board. The pallid yearling knew that his crew wasn’t fond of the idea of losing their life if they opted to leave the crew and take up a life sailing elsewhere. He had never wanted those wolves who would travel in and out of his pack; the young Cairn was more interested in the longer development of his closest companions. If he could not trust them, he did not know what he was asking them to do.
 
It was expected that she would willingly inquire about hunting their deserters down. Smokestep turned to regard her with a thoughtful expression before he nodded. All of them had been given the terms and conditions of approval within the Ironsea crew; all of them would suffer the consequences. “I’ll search wit ye… see if we can catch a trail’n we’ll give ‘em a couple o’ days to come back, if they’ve got their heads on right,” he instructed.
 
“There’s a bigger brute wit a messed up back leg been missin’ a while, an this sweet lil thing – lighter colors wit splashes o’ wot ye’d see on a doe,” he described the two he was most concerned about and then looked to Sandpiper as though she would give him the rest of the answers he sought.