Coconut Grove Midnight driving til my eyes give up

Parivaar territory feature discovery!

With little and less coastal knowledge to go on, Lucas had no way of knowing that the tall, slender palm trees crowded around the coastline here were unusual. He hadn't seen a tree like it before, but assumed they could be found all along the oceanside, so paid them less mind than a more learned wolf might. In summer their fronds would be lush and full, but with cold quickly descending on the Teekons, they were instead looking more brown and serrated. Much like the other trees, which made them uninteresting to the boy as he passed them by on his way down the beach.

What was interesting, though, was the colossal skeleton of some long gone creature. Half buried in the sand, the rib bones clawed up toward the sky in a halfway arc. The ends were eroded and some had simply broken off. Further along the beach were other bones, larger than any Lucas had seen before, and he bent to inspect one of them. It must have been there a very long time, for the the once hard cortical bone was crumbly and pockmarked. They seemed fragile, but also too immense to ever break under any force.

Rocking back on his haunches, the fat young wolf contemplated the creature they might have come from, and never once drew a connection between bones of this size and the enormous creature that had washed up further down the shore a few days past.

the man slipped through the dying trees down to the beach, where the plush form of lucas stood, examining something at the edge of the grove. govinda drew up beside him with a gentle chuff, reaching out his muzzle to sniff delicately at the bones. his eyes followed the arcs, one by one, marveling at the size of them.

perhaps some wolves more inclined to malice would see it as a cage, a place to keep enemies. govinda saw nothing but potential fun in it.

good find, khush, he murmured, the nickname coming to his lips as easily as if he'd been calling lucas so all his life. he gave him a broad smile, the warmth reaching his gaze. where do you think it came from? govinda had some ideas, but he wanted to hear the boy's take on the skeleton.

He was too focused on the arching rib bones to take note of Govinda's approach before he spoke, and he spooked just a little when the man's voice rang quietly beside him. Chuckling at his own inattentiveness, Lucas rocked back on chubby haunches to marvel at the size of the bones. As for Govinda's question, he truly had no idea, but he had a wild imagination that wasted no time.

"Outer space," he replied in a chipper and self-assured voice. "How else could giant bones end up here?" He reckoned they belonged to some sort of giant wolf from the cosmos who had disintegrated. His bones had fallen from the sky and landed here. That was also why they were half buried in the sand. That didn't just happen, you know!

Still the colossal whale from days prior never entered his mind as a possibility.

it was an answer that reminded him of easy--blackbear, damn it--and with the grin that stretched his face came an incredibly painful jab of heartache. the beginnings of tears stung the corners of his eyes, and he hastily blinked them away, laughing instead. god, he missed that girl.

he nodded solemnly at lucas, not wanting to make him feel mocked. that's a fair assumption, he murmured, looking at the bones again. do they not remind you of the whale from the other day, though? perhaps this was one of his family or friends. the huge arching ribs--what else could it be?

or maybe lucas was somehow right, and there were powers beyond their control responsible for this massive skeleton. wouldn't that be something?

Usually Lucas was at least a little perceptive when it came to the emotions of others, but this time he was too transfixed on the ribcage to notice the pain that sparked across Govinda's face. He was certain of his answer right up until the leader of the grove offered another possibility, one that made his waving tail falter just for a second.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, his voice cracking at the end and causing him to duck his head down sheepishly. "Yeah maybe that could be it! But how'd they get all buried like that if they didn't fall from space and get stuck?" Land didn't move by itself, it took a good amount of force to shove something into it without digging a hole, so how could it be from a whale?

But they were about the right size, and Govinda surely knew much more than he did.

his mouth twisted in solemn thought. hmmm. good question. i think maybe. . . he began to pad toward the surf, motioning for lucas to follow. you know how the sand moves when the waves come in and out? things get buried, like shells. though i wonder how long it must have taken to bury this, even partially.

it was just a hypothesis; govinda was well aware he didn't have all the answers. he was appreciative of the boy for getting the gears of his mind moving. he did relish the random existential and scientific conversations that were thrown his way, rare as they sometimes were. lucas would go far, asking questions like that.

what do you think? he asked, glancing over at his young comrade.

He pranced toward the water when beckoned, giggling boyishly when the cold surf washed over beige toes. Govinda certainly was smart. This time, the rich brown leader reminded Lucas of Laurel and the time she'd told him where to find smooth rocks by rivers. Laurel viewed them as treasures and, by extension, Lucas did as well. It made him wonder absently if Govinda collected things from the water like his mother did. He saved that question for another time.

He'd never noticed silt moving in the water before Govinda pointed it out, but as Lucas lowered his snout to peer closely at the waves, he could see the glimmer of sand stirred up in its wake. "Yeah," he acknowledged, tapping his paws in the wet ground. He watched as a pebble rolled in the surf and then sunk into the waterlogged sand. That was a pebble, though. The bones stood like bleached spires on the beach, colossal even now, and he frowned thoughtfully back at them.

"That's probably what happened," he agreed, taking his cues entirely from Govinda, then remarked "but it must've taken like a hundred hundred years to get so much sand up there!" He couldn't wrap his head around that amount of time. Even his mere seven months felt like an entire lifetime to him. No way the bones would still be there, he naively thought. "Maybe someone was trying to bury them too so it went faster?" But who would want to?

These subjects were far beyond his comprehension. That the earth alone could reclaim itself without any external force—had reclaimed itself countless times over millenia of existence, raising entire landmasses just by shifting itself—was absolutely unimaginable to him, though he did believe Govinda's conclusions on the sand and the bones. It would be way cooler if they came from outer space though, he thought. Just sayin'.

achcha, now there's a thought, govinda answered, grinning at lucas. shabaash, khush, well done. maybe something long ago--a scavenger, perhaps--wanted to bury the body to save the meat for later? they came back. . .or not. he nodded his head to the skeleton, picked clean by circumstance and the years. the flesh rotted away, but the bones remain.

he butted his head gently against one of the largest ribs, pressing his nose to the cool ivory. some wolves say you can talk to bones, he murmured. that the spirits of the dead live within them. i've never heard anything there, he added, louder as he pulled away, but maybe there's truth to it. who knows. might put him off bringing them back as toys for pups, come to think of it. sentient bones. . .

while it may have been cooler for them to come from outer space, the likely origin story wasn't exactly boring, either. aliens, though--can't really beat that.

He smiled through Govinda's strangely spoken words, understanding only khush as a sort of nickname for himself. The words had a sort of halting lilt to them and their exotic sounds were arresting. He wished he could understand them or even speak them himself, but he knew it wasn't meant to be. It would take years of learning now that his mind was older and less malleable. Perhaps if Xan had been more than just a name in his life, Lucas would have learned his grandfather's tongue when he was young, but his mother and his aunt knew only the common language, so that was all he'd been taught.

Govinda's musing had an entrancing quality, like a particularly interesting lecturer capable of bringing those who listened to new heights. He couldn't say he believed that bones had spirits without proof of it, but he had enough of an imagination to wonder what that would be like. How eerie. Imagine chewing on a deer femur only for it to begin screaming in agony. Or licking the remains from a rabbit rib and hearing the chittering sound of it. He moved forward to inspect a long bone as well, but he smelled only salt and sensed no present. Not that he could even if he wanted to. If spirits did exist, Lucas wasn't very sensitive to them.

"I hope not," he admitted with a light shiver as he pulled back from the rib. "That'd be sort of creepy." Contemplating the skull lying several yards away, he asked, "do you want to do anything with these, or just leave them here?" He kind of doubted either of them could lift a lot of the bones if they tried but it was worth asking in case they were lighter than they appeared. There were some shards here and there and smaller pieces they could manage though.

he tilted his head, staring at the skeleton. hmmm. perhaps we ought to leave them here, as a kind of landmark? it's always good to have a designated place to meet, after all, govinda said, giving lucas a crooked smile. no one could forget something that looks like this.

"go meet by the giant pile of bones!" seriously. . .it was foolproof, right?

if it becomes any sort of bother, we can remove it by parts, he continued. but i don't see that being the case. we'll leave the spirits be, khush; they've earned their rest. with a gentle but jocular nudge to the boy's shoulder, govinda laughed and began to trot on down the beach, jerking his head toward lucas to follow.

c'mon--let's see if we can find more amazing things here.

A landmark. That made a lot of sense to Lucas, who eagerly bobbed his head in agreement. He couldn't remember if Bearclaw Valley had a meeting point, but if they did, it wasn't as spectacular or iconic as this. Every Parivaar member would come to know this place and would never be unsure of where to gather when called. On the same wavelength as Govinda for a moment, Lucas also thought it was completely foolproof.

"Sure," he said with a faint smile back at the bones. If there were spirits then no doubt they got plenty of rest, but as someone who enjoyed sleep as well, he couldn't fault them for wanting more. Waving his tail jovially, he fell in behind Govinda with gentle puffs of breath as he heaved his heavy body along in the sand. It was going to take a while to get used to walking on shifting ground. It left him more breathless than he cared to admit most days. They headed further into the territory in search of amazing sights, with Lucas occasionally voicing amazement at the territory's more mundane (but uncommon, to him) features.

Fading here! Lemme know if you'd rather continue!