Wheeling Gull Isle canine excavation services

all welcome, but please let @Koi reply first! :)

also, I'll just leave this here

Six was currently digging a hole just a few steps aside from the den entrance. When he had started, he had a very good reason to be doing this. But whatever the reason was, his short attention span had currently forgotten. Now he was doing it simply because it was fun.

Despite having a not-so-effective technique, he has made reasonable progress on creating a divot in the ground that could pose a considerable tripping hazard at a later point in time. The dirt is soft and cool on his paws, and though it doesn’t taste very good he’s ended up with a fair bit of it stuck to his tongue and his nose. At the moment he is enthusiastically digging for a few seconds then spinning around to attack the hole from the opposite side, every once in awhile stopping to rear up and stomp his forepaws down into it, as if there were something that might emerge from the ground if he didn’t trample it down.

Coelacanth emerged from the Labyrinth at the sound of a scuffle. Her atramentous pelage was dusty and her delicate features haggard from the span of time she’d ensconced herself in the island’s secret cave system, but she frequently emerged to interact with her growing children, @Fern and @Mur included. At eight weeks old, the Seelholms’ move to a rendezvous site was growing more overdue by the day, but Seelie had deliberately put it off in the wake of Mou’s disappearance and her smoke-sickness. Fortunately, her children did not seem as affected by the poor air quality. They were made of stronger stuff than their mother, and the Aralez rejoiced.

Edging nearer to the hole her son had dug, the sheepdog cocked her head from one side to the other, her expression patently impressed. She looked at Sixgill’s version of macaroni art with smug maternal pride and “barked” approval, jaws lashing wide to loose a sharp rush of air before snapping shut with a soft click. If she’d been in better condition, she would’ve jumped right down in there with him — but for now, she was simply a rapt observer. She stretched out on her trim belly, her tufted ears Anubis-tall and canted eagerly forward upon her skull.

So completely absorbed in his current activity, Six wasn’t even aware that his mother had emerged from the den until he heard the whispered bark. He paused, looking up in Coelacanth’s direction, tail immediately wagging, dirt covered tongue lolling out between his teeth. “Mama! I dig!” He puffs his chest up and shuffles his paws around to stand up straight and tall like a proud warrior who has just defeated his nemesis – except the ground under his feet is slanted and loose from his digging, and he ends up off balance and tumbles down into the middle of the divot he’s created.

This temporary setback does little to dissuade him though and he rolls back to his feet, shaking dirt from his fur and slapping a paw against the bottom of the hole, like it was the ground’s fault he had fallen. There is a thin tree root that is exposed and it catches his eye, he makes several attempts to dig it out, then resorts to chomping on it and tugging at it to try and pull it from the ground.

“Good boy! Good Six!” Seelie mouths the words more than she actually breathes them into being, but her children have grown accustomed by now to their mother’s quiet way. They must look at her in order to fully listen to her, and because of this, will likely grow to be adept lip readers and keen interpreters of body language.

The sheepdog starts forward the moment her gold cloud child loses his footing and tumbles down, but once she sees he’s okay — and stretches her muzzle forth to sniff at him, because she can’t trust sight alone — she settles back down and watches his swift recovery and immediate retaliation. He is as fierce as the winds off the winter sea, as biting as the salt-sting of the sea, and her heart swells with pride.

The bright, brassy sunburst of Six’s voice breaks through the silver-limned mist of Koi’s dreams, and she untangles herself delicately from @Thresher and @Grayling, attacking Stockholm’s face with a barrage of sweet puppy kisses. The color of her voice is prettiest when she talks to him, so she greets him in a lilting singsong: “Appa!”

She’s electric, buzzing from the contagious excitement shared by Six and Seelie, and when her kisses turn to mouthy little nibbles, Stockholm chuckles and jaw-spars lazily with the tiny girl, dropping kisses on her nose and cheeks. “Go play, silly girl,” he urges her, warm and golden as the sand and the sun, and she breaks into a noodle-limbed sprint that is already beginning to show the promise of grace as she flows across the distance.

She tries to be careful not to destroy the trench Six has dug, but I did say “the promise of grace” — she’s not quite there yet, and she stumbles and tumbles, catapulting into her brother with a soft thud!, the Royce to his Utah. She scares herself in the process, misty blue eyes popping wide, and looks up at her beloved brother with an apologetic, wheedling whine. Did she break the thing? She did not mean to break the thing!

The tree root that Six is tugging on is, for the time being, winning the battle. No matter how much he throws his weight back and shakes his head with it gripped in his jaws, it just won’t budge. But the piebald boy is encouraged by his mother’s assurance that he is a good boy(!), and so he will defeat the root, no matter what. Little growls and grunts escape him as he struggles with it until suddenly he is struck by a tumbling Koi, and the combined force of Six tugging on the root and Koi smashing in to him finally makes it let go with an audible SNAP!

Not expecting this, Six falls back onto his haunches with a piece of the root in his mouth and Koi sprawled at his feet. He blinks at her in surprise then exclaims; “Koi help!”

Because she did break the thing, but that is what was supposed to happen. He grins toothily around his prize, tail wagging back and forth in the dirt as he dips his head down to offer one end of the root to his sister. She did help him acquire it, after all.

“Koi help!”

Golden vowels and orange-limned consonants reassure Koi that whatever she did, it was the right thing — and she picks herself up and celebrates along with her brother, throwing back her muzzle and piping a shrill “oo-woo!” of triumph. She’s enchanted by the spoils of Six’s dominion, but instead of chewing on her end of the root, she rubs her cheek against the spidery limb. Literally tickled by the whisker-like tendrils, she smushes her face and shoulder against it, wriggling around in the dirt. Little grunts and groans wheedle from her puppy blunt muzzle as she spastically squirms and kicks — and then, abruptly, she flops into lateral recumbency, erupts with a little snorting sneeze, and is still.

Six attempts to simultaneously gnaw on the tree root and also shake it as Koi rubs her face and shoulder against it. Being an uncoordinated puppy, this does not go very well, and he ends up kind of gagging himself on the end of the root. He makes an undignified hacking sound and rears his head back as he lets go of the root, pawing at his muzzle once before recovering from the slight as if it had never happened – stomping his paw down onto his end of the root as his sister flops about.

When Koi goes suddenly still though his attention focuses in on her, ears thrust forward so far that they are nearly touching atop his head. Almost as if the cessation of movement triggered some sort of imitation of prey-drive type behavior, he fixates on her, his own body temporarily frozen in place, just barely vibrating with energy. He lingers like that for only a few seconds though before launching forward towards her with the intent to tumble himself ontop of her and pin her down, poking his muzzle at her neck and shoulder and grumbling a series of playful growls, a sort of “are you dead? I’m’a eat you if you’re dead!”

The pearl squeaks in protest and tries to flail herself sternal, spindly limbs windmilling wildly, but Six has her securely pinned. She resigns herself to life as a pancake, and heaves a whuffling, dramatic sigh that stirs the root’s little white hairs. “Yes. Yes, Six. I’m dead,” she conveys, trying to make her body as limp and lifeless as possible to prove her point. She squeezes her eyes shut, but tries to peek through the cracks.

Six’s muzzle is dangerously close to the ticklish spot at the curve of Koi’s throat. She’s ticklish everywhere, all the time, but her neck and belly are particularly sensitive — and when his cold nose pokes into the warm hollow just beneath her chin, a peal of silvery (and slightly hysterical) giggling spills from her mouth. “Six!” she squeals in protest, still shivering with laughter. Her voice is a bright, rosy pink with affectionate giddiness.

Coelacanth watches the puppies play until they tucker themselves out. Six has Koi’s tail trapped in his mouth, and every time he dozes off too much he gives it a shake, as if to say, “Don’t even think about trying to escape!” Eventually, Koi grows fussy with her brother’s ministrations and emits a “fearsome” growl, like an index card being held between the slowing blades of a fan: “brrrt!” “Drop it,” the young mother commands her son after a few repeated episodes of this, wedging her nose between her gold cloud child and her pearl. It takes some convincing, but eventually she soothes both children into a less contentious naptime and dozes off herself.