Wheeling Gull Isle on the line between gaia and poseidon

She spends a lot of time on her own, bored and hungry. She doesn’t know how far she’d gotten away from the glacier but with the weather altering the atmosphere she struggles to make her way back. Instead, she’s closer to the ocean and that’s a whole different world she finds interest in. So far, she’s made it out here without much help. She’s hunted small game and scavenged for the rest and her form is thin and frail, still. 

The sky isn’t as bright as it should be for the time of day and dark clouds sit in the distance. Wind tears through the shores and she squints against the cold air, shivering as it penetrates her thin coat. It reminds her a little of the glacier but more violent and angry. The cold has settled into her bones in a different way than the ice but she wants to shed it all. Can’t the world be warm everywhere? What use is the cold anyway?

With the tide low, she spies the sandbar that reaches from the coas outward and following it with her dark olive eyes leads to something else in the distance. Her head cocks to the side a little and curiosity overcomes all the discomfort from the cold and rain and she trails along the barrier until she reaches the island. The wind whips sand back and forth and she can sort of pick up scents of other wolves but confusion takes over and surely she’s mistaken? 

Without knowing much etiquette as a lone wolf, she doesn’t howl and instead lingers on the fringes of the island.

Still no sign of @Thresher, and Coelacanth is starting to lose hope. Not even gaining little Lucas (who really isn’t so little) can counteract the gigantic minus in her near-constant headcount. A few of the smaller trees have fallen, uprooted by the heavy stormwinds that batter against the island’s flanks. The tempest, she believes, is inching inexorably toward its final, terrible crescendo. She worries that if her firstborn daughter is not found soon, the sea and the sky will swallow her up entirely — so when she sees a pair of tall, umber-edged ears in the distance, far away from the remainder of the pack, she feels something akin to dread instead of joy. She flows across the sand with benevolent urgency — there are no tufts on those ears, but whoever owns them ought to stay far away from the hungry sea for the next while. She pauses after she crests a dune and enters the stranger’s line of sight, her tail whisking in a friendly manner as she lowers her body to the sand.

Amidst the fervent lapping of low tide, “Peace be,” Seelie whispers to the finespun girl, hoping that she will not use those long, gangly legs and oversized paws to run back across the sandbar. The former Aralez has so many questions — how are you? and who are you? and how can I make you happy? — but she stows them all, her Neptune eyes fixed with lively curiosity on the delicate features and the tracery of bone beneath a too-thin layer of flesh and fur. “Hunger?” she asks, getting the word right on the first try for once. She intercepts what usually ends up being one of the first questions asked when people arrive on the island: “Here is Undersea, this island, jewel under sky’s light and sea’s song,” but doesn’t ask questions or make demands herself. It’s more Coelacanth’s fashion to ask what is needed of her.

The sky in the distance doesn’t look so great but she hardly knows anything about weather. If she did, maybe she’d be more concerned and try to find her way home, but something keeps her planted on the island. It’s cold and windy and wet, but it’s not frozen ice beneath her feet or snow penetrating her perpetually summer coat for the season. Plus, even with the water as angry as it is, she likes it. The air is salty, which is comforting, and it’s a weird feeling she can’t quite describe. 

All the snow wolves feel something akin to this upon the glacier but she never has and Tahani once promised her a better place. She realizes now the place isn’t with the snow wolves and her heart aches. Currituck quickly reminds herself she’s not like them. They may be her family but once she’s learned she’s truly not, she’s become somewhat lost in her way. 

Another wolf, small like her and dark in color, starts to approach. Currituck’s tall ears fall back against her head but she seems nice and offers her kind words. They’re not smooth like she’s used to and so she is quiet for a few seconds, uncertain how to answer. 

”I am hunger,” she says, mimicking the word like she hadn’t known it. The dark woman said it so it’s probably right. ”You mean you live here?”

“I am hunger,” the russet-furred girl affirms, and Seelie brightens visibly. The botched language makes no difference to the inkdark allmother; Currituck doesn’t need to speak at all to be understood. Neptune eyes adopt an eager glow as the little wolfdog’s feathered tail begins to wriggle and wave, and she nods emphatically. “Live here,” she repeats carefully in a hushed whisper, nodding toward the angry-looking horizon and the sinister churn of the sea. “Storm soon,” she informs the small girl, a flicker of worry crossing her gentle visage, and straightens to pad a few paces inland. She tips her finely sculpted head in invitation and inquiry, waiting for the younger female to catch up, and offers information for information: “Name, Coelacanth. Seelie. Enyu?” The last is adopted from Komodo’s drawling burr — “An’ you?”

For a few seconds, she thinks the woman is asking her to live here. Maybe. Or maybe she’s just confirming what she thought? She doesn’t know but it doesn’t faze her or slow her down. The little wolf is pretty and small like her but she has a lot more fur than she does.
 
“Currituck,” she says when the woman asks, a smile brightening her features. Her tail waves back and forth that swings her hips to and fro. “I like Seelie,” she says, asks? She isn’t sure. The woman offered it as a name and she doesn’t want to embarrass herself with the first, hard sounds. She licks her lips and glances to the waters. “There is a storm coming?” she deduces, a little delay, as her pointed ears fall back.

“Curri-tuck!” Seelie breathes delightedly, finding the collection of syllables enchanting. She punctuates the girl’s name with a spirited toss of her head and an abbreviated tattoo of her catlike forepaws. What a fun name it is, and how suitable! A blissful dog smile causes her slim jaws to part as her tongue pokes playfully between her canines. “Like Currituck, very, very,” she responds in kind, in her exuberance leaning in with outstretched muzzle. If the girl remains still, Coelacanth’s cold, wet nose will press a soft kunik to the girl’s cheek. “Storm,” she affirms, her Neptune eyes flicking toward the misted horizon. She can feel it all along her skin and taste it on her tongue, but she doesn’t have a way of putting the sensation into words.

“Currituck stay?” she asks plainly, her head tilting coquettishly as her Neptune eyes plead with the girl. She tries to soften her now-characteristic desperation to HERD ALL THE LAMBS by tacking on an out: “Storm,” she repeats in a hushed whisper. “Water danger, sometime. Currituck stay, for safe. No kennel-up. Free.”

Currituck continues to grow confused, despite understanding (for the most part) what’s being said. It’s cute and funny and she wants to mimic it but the girl stays quiet. There isn’t any snow here but the wind is chilly. If she gets out of it, maybe it won’t be so bad. Already, it’s better than the glacier.
 
“I stay,” she says, unintentionally mimicking Seelie. “I will go back to my family and tell them where I am… um, after storm?” she says. She’s certain she can get back on her own, she’d traveled all this way and she’ll just… go back the way she came, of course!

“Yes!” Seelie acquiesces immediately. It is good and right that the girl should tell her family where to find her. “Wish for Currituck meet friend,” she offers sincerely, nosing lovingly at the girl’s cheek as she gestures toward the island’s heart. “Many guppy — Grayling, Treas — Sixgill, Koi, Fern, Mur, Lucas.” She trips over her lost daughter’s name, but rights herself almost immediately, offering the foundling a sad-eyed smile. “Come eat, meet friend,” she repeats, and pads a few steps toward the Labyrinth, where most of the food has been moved to ride out the coming storm.

A new wave of excitement takes over. Later she might feel guilt over leaving her home but they were proof enough that real family only means what she makes it. Her love for them has not wavered but she knows she does not belong there and it goes deeper than just her inability to withstand the icy cold terrain.
 
When the woman offers her to come meet her new friends, Currituck wiggles and bounds forward, disappearing into the territory with all her new pack mates.