Shimmering Sands Could be happy

After telling @Figment and @Fennec that he was going to be away for a ten days or so to track the herds and to keep an eye out for Elfie and Sugar Glider, he departed the Firebirds for the first time since he'd come back. There was much to think about, and getting away from it all felt like the right thing to do. It was unlikely that Niamh would follow him out here (at least that was what he had hoped), and getting away from her was exactly what he needed. She had quickly squashed any hope of them making amends by being completely unreasonable, even by his very generous standards. He was done trying to repair it. There wasn't even anything to repair. They weren't even involved and it had somehow come to this? Phox certainly didn't want to start something off this way. It couldn't be good for their current kids, and it certainly wouldn't be good for any they might have had in the future.

Exhaling, then inhaling, he took in the smell of the ocean. He had never spent much time there, although both his birthplace and Orca's resting place had a view of the sea from afar. The air was salty and sweet, and the sound of the crashing waves were soothing. He thought about Camilla, and while that relationship had been odd, at least it had been simple. They certainly hadn't quarreled over anything like he'd done with Niamh... and she was only a friend! It was so incredibly frustrating, and if Phox were a vengeful wolf, he probably would have considered all sorts of terrible things he could do to piss her off. Fortunately for her, that wasn't the way these things went.

In fact, he wasn't even sure what he would do when he got back home. In all likelihood, he'd probably attempt to avoid her at all costs. Maybe he would just spend more time outside the copse tracking herd movements rather than keeping close. He knew he wouldn't be able to go on like this forever (or very long, at least). An absurd thought popped into his head then... but maybe Colt had been a dick because he was constantly being hounded by Niamh. That would explain a lot, and Phox was suddenly disappointed that he would never get to ask Colt his side of the story.

And so Phox sat there, staring out at the waves with his one good eye and trying to figure out how he could occupy the same pack as Niamh. He wouldn't uproot Figment and Fennec again, and he wasn't about to leave his children. At the same time, he wouldn't ever ask Niamh to leave (and uproot her children in the process).

She probably looked like quite a sight: a young she-wolf trotting along a spit of sand, an otter wound around her neck, his hindquarters nestled in the cradle of her shifting shoulder blades, both their bellies distended. Q and Frolic had enjoyed quite the feast of fish about thirty minutes ago, so she moved more slowly than usual, which gave her a good opportunity to take in her surroundings. The beach reminded her of home, of course: all three of them. Q had been born on one coastline, grown up on another and now pledged allegiance to Seabolt, a pack which called an island its headquarters.

Q was far from that particular home at the moment and, totally unbeknownst to her, quite close to her birthplace. Even if she hadn't been very young when departing Stormrift, she likely wouldn't have remembered the bay. She had taken a kick to the head during her first pack hunt back at Warsaw. She had made a full recovery, except for the part where most of her childhood memories were wispy at best and she sometimes suffered from absolutely excruciating and debilitating headaches. There were other symptoms on occasion, though Q did her best to ignore their existence.

Just now, nothing hurt, except perhaps her overfilled stomach. Abruptly, Q came to a stop, jostling Frolic in his makeshift saddle. The otter loosened his grip on the side of her neck and dropped to the sand even as the she-wolf produced a burp loud enough to startle a nearby flock of seagulls into flight. Wolf and otter both tipped their heads upward to watch them, though the former suddenly noticed a black figure in the distance beyond the wheeling, cawing gulls and said to her companion, "Do you dare me to run up and throw that"—Q pointed out a dead jellyfish near the edge of the surf—"at his head?"

Unaware of the scheming wolf and her pet otter, Phox continued to look out at the crashing waves. He wasn't surprised that many packs chose to make their home here; the view was pleasant, even though this particular beach seemed to have been hit with some heavy forces recently. Phox doubted he would ever be comfortable living here, although the respite from the drama back home was certainly welcome. Out here, he could contemplate things, reflect and cool off without the worry of bumping into somebody he knew too well (or so he hoped).

A flock of gulls reeled overhead, and Phox bent his neck up to watch them. Did they fight amongst each other like he and Niamh had? The Redhawk had a hard time believing that they were entirely unintelligent, especially having utilized X so much in the past. It wasn't until he let his gaze fall downward that he noticed the unlikely duo, which immediately reminded him of Towhee and X (RIP in pieces). They were conversing, and Phox lifted his brows at them, wondering what they were talking about. He didn't approach, leaving that up to them if they wished to do so.

Frolic tittered and began to cavort and stomp, his way of goading her along on the dare. Quell gave him a mischievous grin, interpreting his body language fluently after all their time together, and then glanced sharply at the stranger in the distance. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw he was looking back at them. Damn, she thought at having lost the opportunity for an ambush. But her lips remained curved into a smirk.

Boldly, she strode forward, the lissome Frolic bounding along at her heels. She passed the jellyfish, leaving it to rot with all the other detritus stranded on the shore. The flock of gulls cast shadows over the two of them and the stretch of beach between Q and the stranger as it narrowed. She slowed a little as she approached, pale eyes roving over his features. He was rather average in appearance, his fur a truer shade of black than her own, his melancholy eyes a striking orange against his swarthy face. Quell intrepidly held his gaze.

"You look like someone pissed in your cornflakes," the adolescent observed, giving their surroundings a cursory sweep before her eyes returned to his face. "What happened to this place? Was it the quakes?" Something similar had happened at Seabolt, temporarily flooding the island. And she wouldn't soon forget the nightmare she'd suffered in the aftershocks. She wondered if he lived here and was mourning the destruction of his homeland.

The odd couple approached him, the little one scampering along as if it were the most natural thing in the world. An idea popped into his head just then, but by then, the dark wolf was talking about pissing in cornflakes (what were those?) and asking why the coast was the way that it was. Phox hadn't been here when the coast was destroyed, but he'd been close enough to wager the quakes were what had done it.

That'd be my guess, he replied, and then the thought from before popped back into his head. Who's your friend? And how do I find one for Fennec? He knew that X had once had a daughter, but Tegan had literally murdered any hopes of that younger hawk being a companion for Fennec. Seeing this duo made it seem even more possible than before.

His vague reply answered her unspoken question. Q's lips parted as if to say something else when he asked about her "friend." She glanced down at the otter perched on his hind legs between her forelegs. He was a curious and inquisitive critter, nearly as fearless as Quell herself. But he always stuck close when other wolves were nearby, even at Seabolt. She knew he didn't trust any of them the way he trusted her.

"This is Frolic," she introduced. He tittered in agreement. "And I'm Quellcrist, all one word. Last name's Mayfair." The gulls were beginning to settle down on the beach behind her. She could hear squabbling and imagined some of them were fighting over that dead jellyfish. "So what's your name and why do you look like..." Rather than come up with a descriptor, Q waved her paw around her own face and pulled her lips down in a mockery of a frown, complete with pouted lower lip. Then she took it a step further, clenching her paw into a fist and rotating it back and forth as she pretended to cry. Frolic helpfully supplied a soundtrack, sounding a little like a chipmunk being strangled.

Frolic; cute. And that made the dark wolf Quellcrist Mayfair. Phox felt like that second name should have had some meaning, but if it did, the memories were long gone. Maybe it was just one of the common surnames around these parts. In any case, it didn't sway Phox's attention away from Frolic too much. When she began to ask why he looked like [blank], Phox assumed she was going to ask why he looked like a fox. Instead, she went with a frowny face and a paw scratching at her eyes.

Oh, he replied, frowning even more. Friend trouble. Nothing exciting. Yep, definitely not exciting or worth talking about. Phox returned his gaze to the otter, giving it a curious look. How did you... acquire Frolic? Was that even the right way to phrase it? Is he your friend, or...? The specifics were beyond Phox. X had been around, but she'd always sorta done her own thing, just relaying messages when needed. Sorry, my name's Phox Redhawk. My sister, Towhee, she used to have a hawk that helped her; that's why I'm so curious about Frolic there.

He didn't take offense at her pantomime, though he answered sort of vaguely again. Maybe he didn't want to share what troubled him. Q shrugged inwardly. Now he wanted to know more about her sidekick. She couldn't help but snicker at the term "acquire." She grinned down at Frolic, who looked up at the very same time, meeting her eyes. He patted his little paws against her foreleg, so Q abruptly bowed forward to let him clamber back onto her shoulders. He took up his customary position: partially wrapped around her neck and held in place by the bones in her shoulders. He was sort of like a living, breathing scarf.

"He's my buddy, yeah," Quell replied. The story about his sister and her hawk intrigued her, though instead of asking more about it, she remembered to answer his question first. "It's a funny story, ah..." Twisting her neck around to address the otter, she said, "Cover your ears." When his little mitts came up to the tiny flaps on either side of his face, she turned back toward Phox and said, "I took a kick to the head on my first pack hunt and swore off big game after that day. I decided to focus on small game instead and became quite the killing machine." She grinned cockily. "Long story short: I killed and ate his parents and was going to eat him too but then he looked at me." Q twitched a shoulder and Frolic released his ears. "I raised him and we've been inseparable ever since," she finished with a lopsided smile.

Her tail switched and she glanced upward as a pair of seagulls whipped past, fighting over some scrap of food. Quell swore it looked like a tentacle. Her eyes then dropped back to Phox's face and she queried, "A hawk would be badass. No offense, Fro," she said, pronouncing it like a southern drawl of the word "fry." The youth's brow furrowed as she added, "Hol'up, you said 'used to have'...?" in an almost accusatory voice.

Phox didn't have to wonder long why Quellcrist asked Frolic to cover his ears. The story was pretty gruesome, especially when he considered that the end game had resulted in the otter becoming her friend. Clearly he wasn't aware of what had happened... so maybe the trick was to get them young. Maybe raising a small animal like that was the trick to getting one for Fenton. All he had to do was murder the critter's parents and be on his merry way. Make it dependent on the very wolves who had taken away its mom and dad.

Already, Phox was plotting to track down some nesting grounds of various animals and see what he could find once spring rolled around. That seemed to be when most of the young ones were born. Although maybe it would be better to wait until early summer so they weren't entirely dependent on their parents anymore. It wasn't like he could expect a wolf to nurse something other than her own kind.

Yeah, uh... a pack mate of ours killed X, the hawk. Don't worry; he's not around anymore, Phox said, as if Tegan might have been secretly hiding nearby or something. I'm hoping to fall into a similar situation for my daughter. She's blind, and I think it would boost her confidence tremendously to have a companion who could help her out when we can't be there for her. Might make her more independent, you know?

Q's eyes narrowed and her lip lifted when Phox told the story. Some of the wolves at Seabolt had looked at Frolic hungrily at times, hence why the critter always stuck close to her. (To be fair, they were pretty inseparable in general.) She couldn't imagine what she would do if one of her own comrades harmed him. Hopefully she would never find out.

Her lips slid back over her teeth when Phox went on to mention a blind daughter. Had Towhee been blind too? Did that sort of thing run in a family, like the spots that she had inherited from her sire? Quell could've fallen far down that rabbit hole, though she reminded herself to focus. It helped when Frolic nibbled gently on her ear, as if sensing she'd gotten lost in her thoughts and wanting to bring her back to the present.

"I bet Frolic would be good at that," she mused, immediately picturing her own companion in the role, though Q hastily added, "But he's not for sale. I think you should try looking for a baby animal and raise it, so it'll bond to you—to her, I mean." She stretched her neck toward Phox then, speaking sotto voce through barely moving lips as she added, "Killing and eating the parents first isn't strictly necessary."

Straightening again, Q wondered, "Do you and your blind family live somewhere around here?" They'd already established that they didn't live on this beach, though the longer they stood here talking, the more curious she became about this Phox character and his pack.

Phox had no intention of uprooting Frolic from Quellcrist, though he would have had a hard time refusing if that had been offered to him outright. She explained that killing the parents wasn't strictly necessary, which made Phox wonder if he could catch a baby in its nest somewhere. Part of his job as a tracker was to keep an eye on those sorts of things, so he would have to be more aware once the season progressed a little bit further. He wondered what kind of animal would make the best companion for that sort of thing. Maybe an otter was the obvious choice, judging by this encounter alone. A bird was good, and they could quickly get out of danger if needed (unless the wolf was Tegan, apparently).

She asked if he and his blind family lived nearby, and Phox stifled a laugh. They're not all blind, just Fennec, my daughter. My sister is deaf, so the hawk helped her when others would howl for her. At least that was how Phox had tended to use X to his, and Towhee's, advantage. We live a bit south from here. A little group called the Firebirds in a place called Sun Mote Copse. Are you... looking for somewhere to settle? Phox's recruitment skills were a bit rusty. He hadn't needed to use them since his time at the grove, and since she hadn't outright asked, he hadn't even considered the possibility until now.

The question seemed to amuse him, though he quickly corrected her. She wondered what sense he was missing then, though before she could make the joke, he described how exactly the hawk had helped Towhee. That was pretty damn cool. She almost wished she'd raided a hawks' nest and adopted a chick instead, though Q wouldn't trade Frolic for the world. She even reached up a paw and patted at him, still snugly wrapped around her neck.

She concentrated on Phox again as he shared his pack's name and location. His hesitant question made her smile, though the youth quickly shook her head. Although she was definitely intrigued—blind wolves, deaf wolves and wolves who knew the value of a familiar—her loyalty lay elsewhere.

"Nah, I'm actually part of a pack called Seabolt. It's based off an island back that-a-way," Q said, motioning her snout westward. "I'm on a mission," she announced, puffing up her chest self-importantly, mostly jokingly. "I've been tasked with searching for any sign of large game. We haven't seen a single herd since the flood practically wrecked the place in the early fall. The quakes," she explained, since Phox had seemed to know what she was talking about before.

Quellcrist explained where she was from and why she was here, going on to say that she was on a diplomatic mission to Alderan. She was to search for large game, something that Phox had caught signs of only in the past few days. It wasn't much, just a pile of droppings and some hoof prints, but that was more than he'd seen since the landslide which had been the downfall of Asterism Grove. Yes, the same thing happened here. I did see the first signs that they may be returning. Not much—just some deer dung and hoof prints—but I think they'll be returning in full before the moon makes another turn.

Part of Phox's job as resident tracker was to keep tabs on these things. He'd been hoping to find more than just that little sign of them, but he reminded himself he still had the journey back to look for more. Perhaps that would give this trip more purpose than just sorting through his own personal problems (of which he had many). Maybe it would serve as a sort of working vacation.

So both the quakes and the subsequent shortage of large prey had afflicted this area too. Quell filed that information in a cabinet in the back of her mind, paying close attention to the details Phox offered. Deer dung and hoof prints were both promising leads, so she knew she was on the right track. Hopefully she wouldn't have to venture too much further from home and would instead be able to collect some evidence and head back to the island.

"That's some great intel. Thanks, bruh!" Q said brightly. "I'm really glad I didn't throw that jellyfish at your head," she said apropos of nothing before asking, "Did you see these signs somewhere to the south of here?" It was a guess based on his mention of his pack's whereabouts and hopefully gave her some direction on where to go from here.

She thanked him, and Phox found himself smiling, his reasons for being out here tossed to the wayside. In fact, he even found himself wondering if Quellcrist was the kind of girl he should be looking for. One who was upbeat, more direct, and—at least at first glance—didn't pick fights. Of course, because Quellcrist wasn't with the Firebirds, Phox's thoughts were more generalized than viewing her as the object of his attention. Instead, he thought about her qualities and personality.

The jellyfish comment gave him pause, but he didn't bother to inquire further about what she had meant. Phox nodded when she asked the whereabouts of the signs of returning large prey. In a forest southeast of here, yeah. I doubt it's a herd of one, so more should be along soon enough. Phox was already prepping himself to organize a hunt once he got back to the Firebirds.

He corroborated her belief and she made a mental note: southeast it is. Part of her wanted to bustle off right then and there. She had been away from Seabolt for many days already and was eager to locate her target and get back home. But she didn't want to be rude, especially since Phox had been so helpful with pointing her in the right direction.

"I really appreciate the tip," the youngster said. She hoped that giving him a lead on a companion animal for his daughter and getting his mind off his troubles made them square. "Are you heading back that way? I could walk you home if you like." Maybe it was a bold and overly forward offer, yet if they were going both going in the same direction, it seemed silly not to make it. "Unless you have further business on this beach, of course, in which case I'll let you go back to your brooding," she added with a good-natured grin.

There was a dirty joke staring him right in the face, but Phox managed to keep his composure, instead of smiling and nodding when she thanked him (for the tip). She offered to walk back with him, but the Redhawk shook his head. I'm planning on staying out here for at least another day, he replied. There was still much to think brood about, and having this chipper young thing around wasn't exactly conducive to that. Little did he know that Niamh would come crashing in soon enough anyway, spoiling all his plans to be out here and alone.

It was nice meeting you, Quellcrist—and Frolic—of Seabolt. If you ever find yourself near the Firebirds, feel free to pay us a visit. Maybe my daughter will have a companion if I have any luck finding one for her. Rare were the occasions on which Phox found himself inviting non-recruits to their borders, but he meant it. There was something about Quellcrist that had already put him in a better mood. Her advice on companions had been most useful, and hopefully helpful for his daughter.

He shook his head before explaining that he intended to linger on the beach a little while longer. She bobbed her own head in understanding, receiving his farewells with a wink, click of her tongue and finger guns. She felt Frolic tighten his grip as Q prepared to go. She would head south eventually, though she thought she might also spend some more time on the coast before she headed that way.

"I hope we both find what we're lookin' for," Q said in parting. "Toodles, Phox!" She waved her tail and romped away along the dunes, Frolic bouncing lightly on her shoulders.