Cerulean Cape all the lights went down for miles around

@Sybil
backdated a bit :)

maya liked to think she was good at fishing. in fact, she liked to think she was good at pretty much everything, which did not mesh well with her complete inexperience when it came to anything that wasn't mischief, but the point was that, after spending an hour straight trying to get her jaws around anything other than seawater, she was not having what one might call a great time.

dripping water everywhere, oversized ears so heavy with moisture they practically hung in her face, she scowled mightily as she shook her fur out with one rapid, aggressive movement of her body, almost knocking herself over as she did so. she was beginning to realize the major downside of fishing in the ocean as opposed to a river, ie, everything tasted horribly of salt, and she drooled and spat as she glared out at the water, which twinkled merrily back, bright with the sunlight reflecting off the waves.

so busy was she with her feud she almost missed the turtle wandering, very slowly, towards the water. but she did, out of the corner of her eye, and her head swiveled, ears flicking forward as she crouched like an excited cat, all irritation abruptly forgotten. this she could do.

she bounded towards it, tail streaming wildly behind her, and scooped it up in her jaws. it almost slid back out again before her teeth found purchase on the shell, and she raced up the beach with her trophy in her mouth until she was safely back in the dunes and ran no risk of accidentally letting the thing roll right into the water.

"ha!" she announced, straightening up as if she had won an actual victory by capturing it, and snapped her head down, pitching the thing directly into the ground. it did nothing more than send up a spray of sand when it hit, and all its fleshy limbs had long since vanished into safety, but that was not going to deter her! it was a turtle after all. she planted one paw atop the dome of its shell. "dumbass," she told it. it was bad manners to gloat probably but it was going to be dead soon, so that didn't matter.

soon being a relative term for however quickly she figured out how to get it out of there. which she would. eventually. she flopped down on her belly, treated it to her fiercest glare, pulled it towards her with her front paws and started doing her best to stick her muzzle into the holes where its legs and head should have been.

Since her time discovering this "ocean" thing that was far too expansive and salty to be a big lake like she'd previously thought, Sybil had spent a lot of time trotting down its shores and learning what was normal to find on them. Crabs, half-eaten fish, tiny pools of water, shells, bits of coral, seaweed, seagulls, that sort of thing. What wasn't normal... was a wolf on its belly trying desperately to fit into a turtle shell, as she so happened upon today while languidly walking by the waves and looking around at the scenery.

She paused and tilted her head at the odd sight, a good enough distance away that she didn't think they'd notice her — even then, how could they? They had their snout inside a turtle!

...

Yeah, not what she thought she'd be thinking about today, even by her weird standards.

Confused, fascinated, and amused all at once, she merely stood there and observed, coming up with a million-and-one different possibilities for just WHAT they were doing. The most obvious, of course, was that they wanted to eat the turtle, therefore were trying desperately to pull it out... but that explanation was boring! Maybe they thought they were a turtle and were trying to get a home. Or maybe they were in love with the turtle, but the romance wasn't meant to be, as they were from two different worlds. Or—and this one was also more probable[/mdash]maybe the turtle had bitten them and drug them in, effectively making them stuck.

The build-up of all these silly ideas made her chuckle, and, feeling confident on account that someone else was in the compromising position and not her, she mustered up some social courage and trotted down to them, stopping on just the other side of the turtle.

"Think it's occupied, dude," she remarked with a faintly wagging tail tip and an amused grin.

as luck would have it, maya had not yet made the error of sticking her nose too close to its weird toothless mouth. she was a bit busy trying to get a hold on one of the legs; when she jammed her muzzle against it she could feel its weird wrinkly skin with her nose but it was just out of biting range.

"i know you're in there," she said. "just --" she pinned the turtle down a little harder with her paw, teeth scraping against the edges of its shell, to no avail. she made a frustrated noise and tried harder, claws scrabbling against the surface. after a moment she drew her head back and lowered it, spinning the shell around with her paws until she caught sight of what she thought was probably the turtle's face. beady eyes stared out at her from the depths as it stubbornly resisted her attempts to make it lunch.

"you are really asking for it now," maya hissed, so thoroughly caught up in this conflict with her new nemesis that, at first, she missed the not-insignificant sound of paws on sand. in fact, she didn't even notice it until, still locked in her high-stakes staring contest, her attention entirely fixed on the turtle, something spoke.

for a second she thought it was the turtle, too.

"what the --" maya's head shot up, ears flat back and scowl quickly rising to prominence as she took in her visitor. she looked younger than maya was, which was...saying something, frankly. but she would not be deterred by the looming possibility of being an asshole to a child! that was what she was best at, after all. the asshole part. she didn't actually pick on kids. exclusively.

hmph. "well it's not gonna be for long," maya declared with what was, perhaps, a bit too much confidence. sniffed. "can i help you? or are you just here to mock my efforts?" well, nobody had ever accused her of not being a drama queen.

Sybil's confidence was incredibly short-lived, as usual. It had a tendency to do this often—come and go in short spurts, always making her think she was actually starting to like herself when it did come, then thoroughly slamming her in the face with "lol nope, you're on your own" when it left. Before, on approaching this stranger, it'd been easy to strut over and make a teasing comment while their face was buried in a turtle's shell. Now, however, when they looked up and shot her with a scowling glare, intense as a thousand suns, she felt her "confidence" leak down into her paws and leave her with the shaky, overwhelming thought of "oh god why did I think this was a good idea".

"Well, it won't be for long," the girl before her proudly claimed, bearing real confidence that Sybil could only achieve by faking it... which she vainly tried so as not to crumble under the other's stare, effectively hiding her anxiety and fixing the turtle with a disbelieving look.

"Riiiight..."

Can you even pull turtles from their shells...? She'd never heard of or seen one without a shell, now that she thought about it... then again, turtles weren't that common where she came from and she was far from an expert, so who was she to say?

The other then spat in her face—a reaction that broke through her unperturbed facade and made her lean back a bit, ears pinning against her skull. "Can I help you?" She said, with more venom than any snake or spider known to wolf. "Or are you just hear to mock my efforts?"

Taking a moment to breathe and think of a response, Sybil warily went on, already wanting to be free of this conversation that she'd started. The wolf made a great point; why was she even over here?

"Okay, cool your tits, I was just joking! Damn..." She turned to look at the ocean, unable to keep eye contact with this intense female for long. If was like she was... staring into her freaking soul or something...

"Can you even pull a turtle out of its shell? Like, wouldn't it be easier to just... smash it with a rock...? Or something...?"

maya was not what you would call accomplished at reading body language or expressions or really anything that wasn't expressly stated in words, largely because most of the time she just ignored it in favor of paying attention to herself...so all of sybil's nonverbal thoughts on the matter she had just stumbled into went thoroughly ignored. what did not go ignored was her comment, which to maya's ears sounded a bit disbelieving. maya bristled. what was this? did she really think she couldn't pull it off?

HMM. "you have so little faith in me," maya said. the words were teasing, but combined with the narrowed squintiness of her eyes and her bristly scruff (though to be fair, most of that was the salt and sand caked into every strand of her fur, anyone who thought the beach was fun was full of shit) she was probably giving off some mixed messages.

particularly considering the effect of her words was to make the woman rear back as though maya had just tried to take a big bite out of her nose.

her squint intensified, and all at once, her thunderous expression broke, abruptly, into an impish grin. "so was i," she said, cackling as she flopped both forelimbs over the turtle's shell. maybe? being a dramatic jackass on purpose was kind of like joking. she was a little self-aware. she extended one paw to pat at the other woman's leg consolingly, even as the other wolf turned away to...look at the ocean. okay. and offer a suggestion that...actually made her eyes widen.

"...oh." shit. fuck. that would make more sense, wouldn't it? she looked, perhaps a bit sheepishly, down at the turtle trapped in her proverbial grip, and then sprang to her paws, looking wildly about for a rock that would help solve this situation.

Just as quickly as the girl had snapped, she suddenly wiped the brazen attitude and expression from her face, offering a mischievous grin and assuring she was too was only joking as she consolingly stroked Sybil's leg. Confused by the rapid change of behavior, Sybil furrowed her brows, squinted her eyes, and pursed her lips, appearing as the complete embodiment of 'wtf', though the words never actually left her mouth. That was... a joke? Weren't jokes supposed to be... funny? Light-hearted? Maybe occasionally morbid yet still chuckle-worthy? Not "take a long walk off a short cliff"-y?

Meh... whatever. Maybe that was just this girl's sense of humor, and by all means, if that meant she was actually angry at Sybil, she'd gladly take it in stride.

Then—oh. Oh shit. Was she... was she actually right about something?

Upon giving her suggestion (which Sybil hadn't thought much of and had been fully expecting to get a snippy 'that's stupid, you're stupid in response), the other widened her eyes and suddenly bore a blank-faced expression, muttering a simple, enlightened "oh" like that had been the revelation of the century. Immediately afterward, while the mousy yearling stood with arched brows of shock, the other leaped up onto her paws and rapidly began to search for, presumably, a rock.

Huh. Cool. So... she'd helped...? Frost blue eyes falling to the momentarily abandoned turtle, she figured she could keep helping while her newfound acquaintance searched, proceeding to trot over, lie down in the sand, and secure the shelled amphibian with a single foreleg.

Well, couldn't call her an acquaintance if she didn't know her name, right...? And though exchanging names was pretty natural for anyone else, social anxiety cruelly whispered, 'Ah, she probably doesn't really want to know your name,' making the girl hesitate. After a brief, uncertain pause full of debate, she awkwardly pierced the silence with, "I'm Sybil."

maya scuttled back and forth along the nearby strip of dunes, all thoughts of this stranger being Right There gone from her head in favor of the item she needed to remove her meal from its hiding place. unfortunately mostly everything to be seen was just sand and pebbles, and the turtle was...well, it wasn't that big, but it probably called for a lot more than a pebble. it was a shame the things could breathe underwater; otherwise she could have just dunked it until it drowned. why did they have to be so difficult?

she was currently excited enough not to be immediately deterred by the lack of anything functional in her view. maybe a piece of driftwood would work...? but no, those tended to be soft and squishy, which besides being gross to touch with her paws was not going to work well against the shell. she grumbled audibly, positivity vanishing as though it had never been. she was probably going to have to...swim. in the saltwater. which would dry more in her fur and then she'd get even spikier and it was already gross and unpleasant to move with the salt and the sand cracking whenever she took a step.

"ugh!" she exclaimed, loudly, and whirled around to see the woman lying in the sand with one paw thrown over maya's turtle. she puffed up, which combined with her salt-sharp fur had a truly comedic effect, focus snapping immediately away from the thought of rocks, but before she could accuse this stranger of attempting to hijack the turtle which she had captured fair and square she opened her mouth and spoke.

everyone wanted to introduce themselves, didn't they? fine. she could do that. "okay, i'm maya, where the fuck do you even find rocks here?"