Ankyra Sound Mont Blanc Radiance

hold that thought. val raised a black paw, putting a pause on the topic. if dwin was a mountain goat he was the scraggly leopard trying to keep up. he liked the enthusiasm in which she tackled every thought — but he needed her to slow down some so his own old-adult brain could process it. you think very fast. he remarked, more in the hopes of reining in further questions. i have two moms, actually. well, technically i have three. so, that would be a ‘mores’ as you call it.

val paused to give dwin space to say whatever came to mind next. he’d only known her for a few minutes, yet he was confident this piece of information would be a wellspring of new ideas, a launching point to a whole new landscape of interrogative thinking.

as for being a good story-teller… val would tuck this compliment somewhere far inside, and pull it out like a worn photograph to fondly examine on days of endless rain.

"Three? Wow, you see - I told you - now I can add to my list meeting a black beast-hound from Hell, who had three moms!" Dwin would have even more to tell the next person she met. "What are they like? I have only one, but she is the best mom in the world. She was a traveller herself, when she was young. And she spun stories and poems with my aunt. She knows a lot of stories and is fun to have around," she was very happy, when she retold this, but at the very end her expression fell, as if she had realized, how far away Maia really was and how at the end of this encounter and this day she would be all alone again. That was even more heartbreaking than musing, whether being adopted meant that she was not a real Blackthorn, but just an imaginary one. 

"Yeah... never mind," she quickly looked away and brushed away, what seemed to be tears welling up in her  eyes. "So - what are your moms like - tell me?" she repeated the question, though some of the previous steam was missing. 

in one breath dwin asked after his mothers and then detailed — with inimitable enthusiasm — the greatness of her own. val did not mind, and would never have dreamed of denying dwin that small pleasure.

he noted towards the end a light stole from her eyes and a sadness loomed there. was she lost, then? she didn’t seem lost, yet he resolved to ask.

well one of my mothers is dead. val lead with this, because while it was painful to announce to the air (and he had never once breathed to life this irrefutable reality until this moment), he knew that if any audience would be receptive of this news, it would be his newfound friend. the other two are very much alive, and live there. he motioned to the cold cliffs which cast their shadows for miles around them. one is battle-hardened and tired. she is like your mama dragon. she has fought many bears for her cubs. the other is more like your mother. she is a great teller of stories — she knows more about the earth and the sea than any wolf i have met. and she was the one that first told me of the ghosts that live here in ankyra. you could meet both of them — my moms, not the ghosts — if you want. but i have to ask — are you lost?

Big bad Dwins did not cry and yet all she could think of was the great things she had had at home. Mom, dad, her annoying, but very much beloved bunch of siblings and cousins, aunties and uncles and how even with all she had seen and experienced, Brecheliant's light seemed to shine brighter and better. This was not, how an explorer should feel. At least not to her knowledge, collected from stories of great adventures and family anecdotes.

The sense of miserableness was so sudden and overwhelming that she hardly heard, what Val told her. About his dead mom, who probably was a ghost or a demon or an angel somewhere (she believed that even in death there was choice). And then about the two very much living ones and she envied him for that - having those two moms so near, while hers was so far away. She had to remind herself that this had been her choice, her parents had not wished to see her go this early. Perhaps they had been right and it was even harder to admit to yourself, when you were in such a hurry to grow up and be an adult. 

"Depends, how you define "lost"," she replied, choosing her words carefully. "If I was supposed to go in one direction, but chose to go in the opposite - does that counts as me being lost?" an explorer should know - she was of opinion that she was not lost, but a second view was very welcome.

a change overcame dwin, who now looked as if the rain had come and snuffed out every candle in her parade. val’s brow furrowed at the non-answer. she seemed distracted and suddenly withdrawn, not unlike an urchin retracting in on itself.

okay, what about this? val breathed through his nose, trying best to frame his question in a way that would be easily answerable. is your mom looking for you?

in that moment val was reminded she was so very young. he may have been her age too, when he left home — yet he’d been extraordinarily lucky to only meet wellmeaning travelers on the road. when i was your age, i left home too. i missed my maman something fierce, but i wanted to see it all. he took a deep sigh and looked to the sky, where trees leaned in and clouds mutely traipsed across braids of blue. but i came back. do you need me to bring you back home?

"No," Dwin shook her head. Maia and no one else in her family knew, where she was. Only that she was gone. "They saw me off, when I decided to travel and they know that I am on the road. That's about it. Wouldn't..." that steam engine called her mind revved up a little, while her expression was still melancholic. "Wouldn't it be nice to talk to them once in a while? Like have that mirror to look into, call and see their faces and hear their voices. That would be convenient," she mused, her gaze wandering. 

"You do not know, where I live - how can you bring me anywhere? Considering I let you?" she smiled. "No, no - I don't need to be brought anywhere. But food would be nice - come to think of it," she was hungry. Very. Tired too.

she was not lost. in fact, her family had seen her off. this news relieved val, who had been prepared to march dwin through thick and fen to get her home.

he wondered how her family had looked, congregated around her as she was sent off. did her mother cry? come to think of it, what about her father? val realized he was filling in empty faces with those of his own perspective. perhaps hers was very different.

you can talk to them. val leaned in, a spark in his green gaze. have you ever had a vivid dream, or seen someone you knew in them? he thought of his own dreams - of the ivory soul that occasionally flit in and out of his subconscious like a dove. think of them before you sleep, of what you would say to them. and hold that memory as you drift to sleep. if you do it right, you may appear in their dreams too.

he rose, taking the hint. there is all kinds of food here. come, i can show you how to listen to crabs under the sand. but be careful - they pinch back.

Had Dwin known that this young man, who had patiently listened to all her cheerful banter, attempted to keep up and humoured her, had been ready to escort her back, she would have felt flattered. Yes, she had claimed that she was Dwin first and foremost, second - Blackthorn, and only third - a girl, there would have still been a sense of smugness for having a companion. Just imagine Dee's face! Yet this line of thought never materialized, because Val did not attempt to persuade to go home and/or offer his service. 

"The longer I am away from home, the weaker those memories become. The scent is lost and so are the visuals," she explained. "I am also not sure I want to dream about Brecheliant - it does not make me very happy, when I wake up again," she shared in a rare moment of vulnerability. "I am also not sure that they would be happy to have me in their dreams too. They did not want me to go," she explained, raising to her feet and approaching Val to see, what he was about to show. 

"There is life under sand?" she asked, leaning down and turning her head to listen with one ear. 

val was about to edge protest for dwin’s fading family until he learned these memories didn’t make her very happy. he recognized he knew little of her life, and so, should not offer unsolicited advice about it. she would learn on her own if these things were valuable or if they were better off cast to the wind.

talking about crabs was much easier than navigating the pitfalls of complicated family dynamics. oh yes. dwin’s head pressed to the sand wrestled a laugh from the male. there is life under everything. even your skin. he began to trot, starting slow enough that she might keep up. twice he scented the wind and turned an ear, listening with unbroken concentration.

the ocean has a lot of life in it too, but you won’t catch me going in it. i can show you how to listen for the crabs, but you are on your own if it scuttles off into the water.

crabs, like many mollusks, hid where it was dark and still — only braving the currents when the conditions were right. val crouched, eyes trained on the packed sand where small little holes appeared in a ring like concentric bubbles. you are not afraid of spiders, right?

"Fleas and ticks count - yes? Though they do not live under my skin, but on it. Jay or Aiden told that they can burrow under your skin and crawl there," Dwin told. There was another story. Of the horror genre. About the skin-crawler, who caught you by your foot during the night, skinned you and wore your fur and had a crown of feet of on his head. But with it getting a little late, it was not a tale she wanted to share. She was not particularly afraid, nor did she believe that this particular bogeyman was more real than the rest, but she preferred going to sleep feeling sad for being far away from home than thinking about, how to curl in a ball so that not a single pawpad was left out for the skin-crawler to catch. 

"Why? Are you afraid of the Big Fish?" she asked, recalling a far-away day in spring, when Teya had attempted to teach her fishing. "We had the Big Fish in our lake - our Raven told us to be very careful. And it was very real - I have seen it making huge splashes!" this cautionary tale had had an opposite effect on her. It had made her wish to go in the water and find that rascal even more. "Spiders - no. I had a spider friend. It was big, black and had seven legs and it lived in the bush above my trench," she explained. "Are crabby things like spiders?"

fleas and ticks do not count. there is a whole other world under the earth. we will join it someday. val strode towards the spot where the sand marbled and little bubbles appeared. he did not know who jay and aiden were, but they were right - parasites were expert skincrawlers.

val shot dwin a discouraging look over his shoulder. there are bigger things in the ocean than big fish. you think i am afraid of a fish? he inched closer once more, his voice quiet. crabby things are water spiders, here. motioning to where the sand had raised divets and little punctuation marks (air holes made by hungry crabs). look for these.

with a grunt val began to furiously dig. several pawfuls of sand were scooped from the compacted sand before a shape -- small and angry -- was sent skittering across the beach.

"Like how? Have you ever thought of becoming as small as a beetle and just see the world from its perspective? Or a mole. They have a whole life under the earth that we do not know of. I once tried to follow a tunnel they had made and it was long and then it disappeared somewhere deep and I no longer could dig it up," Dwin had regained some of her earlier chattiness, though her mind was not generating ideas at such speed as it had earlier.

"Well, you have not seen the Big Fish of Brecheliant. If you met him in person, you might think otherwise," Dwin felt that she should defend the honor of their local beast. "The one I saw is huge, it caught a pidgeon once and ate it whole," she referred to the catfish. Teya had not been wrong to warn little Blackthorn about being careful around the area. A small puppy had a perfect lunch size. "What are things that you are afraid of in the ocean?" she asked, since Val had not specified, what kind of monsters spooked and ate locals in this area.

"Oh, my god they look gorgeous!" she exclaimed, when Val had unearthed one of the spiders. She followed it to the water's edge staring at it curiously, but having no instinct on attacking it and eating. It was a foregin dish that she did not know you could eat. 

Before wriing this post I watched a short video from BBS Kids about hermit crabs changing their shells. And - post 100 goes to you!

reminds me of this meme i saw the other day

vestiges of earlier dwin returned. val grinned between heaves of his paw. he'd been thwarted by a mole once or twice, and knew well their quick passageways to escape.

dwin defended the big fish that haunted brecheliant's waterways, cautioning of the time the great beast had swallowed a bird whole. val was about to answer her question about the ocean when the crab flew into the air.

it took great control on his behalf to not dive after it immediately. he knew how rapidly they could scuttle away with their angry arms waving. dwin followed the crab, but did not strike.

you have a strange definition of gorgeous. val watched as the creature slid into the water, gone forever. he almost imagined he could hear the bubbling hiss of its chelicerae in disapproval as it sank. that was your lunch.

as for what monsters are in the ocean, well, you are new to this area. allow me to acquaint you with what i have seen. val began walking again, his gaze searching for any other marbled surface of sand that might have a crab underneath. everything in the great vast water thingie, as you put it, are huge. we may as well be bugs to them. at night here, the water glows a bright blue and things swim under the water that you can hear but not see. i have seen things that were neither wolf nor fish, but bore the teeth of a wolf and the fins of a fish. i have seen, once, a great liquid thing with hundreds of arms and black blood. val slowed next to a mound of sand which he was certain a crab might be resting under. and, once, saw a creature that spanned the length of twenty wolves at least, lurking out there in the tide line. he waved a paw towards the dark stacks in the water, which sometimes were accessible at low tide. even recalling that memory sent a shiver down the man's spine.

he circled the mound, directing dwin's attention to the little holes that dotted the sand. here. you try. dig there, where the bubbles are.

I died. :D

"Didn't look like a lunch to me," Dwin shrugged and waved a goodbye to the first crab she had met in her life. Being on a mainly mammalian diet - the idea of eating anything else felt exotic and she had her reservations. Plus - this creature really looked too interesting to be eaten. Yet Val insisted that they were edible and, since he was a local and she was very hungry (one step away from hallucinating that her companion was a walking fried chicken on paws), she decid not to argue further. 

"Did you ever try to talk to them?" she asked, not understanding, why would Val in the face of such a grand scene would prefer to sit and watch from afar. "They must be very intelligent - consider the size of heads of those creatures," she mused, looking over at the vast water thingie hoping that one of those aforementioned beasts were to appear now. "Or - did they try to eat you? Is that's, why you do not like the ocean?" she asked, turning back to Val. "Oh - can they get out of the water and walk the earth too? Or they are bound to that place?" 

Dwin obeyed - while listening to his replies with one ear, she focused on the task at hand. She dug the little mound and came eye to eye with a compatriot of their earlier friend. "Hi!" she greeted the little guy, who waved his arms at her. "What now?" she looked over her shoulder at Val. 

val remembered when he was younger, much like dwin, he was more fascinated in looking at his lunch than eating it. more than once, a gorgeous waterfowl or handsomely feathered grouse had eluded his teeth for sheer want of his adoring curiosity.

but as an adult, val had starved. he learned that living things were a commodity, not a rarity; a resource, not a source of wonder. and if he did not strike quickly, his stomach forewent its lunch.

i would have to talk very loudly for them to hear me. val mused, thinking of each stranded creature he'd come across. with the exception of the very large thing i saw out in the stacks, all of them were dead. what killed them? that's what worries me. not them, but the thing that made it so their only recourse was to run to the beach where they died.

at this point dwin had managed to extract a crab herself. this thing did not flee as quickly - instead it raised its pincers over its carapace and gurgled its displeasure. careful, they pinch. val reminded her, recalling his first woeful encounter with a crab. now you kill it. unless you want to go hungry. gulls will take them and drop them from great heights to kill them and break their exoskeleton. we do not have wings, so we have to what wolves do best. val leaned forward, his lean shoulders hunched. grab it by a pincer and smash it against the sand until its dead.

"Well, maybe they tried to walk on earth and that idea went horribly wrong?" Dwin suggested. "My grandma Finley broke her leg, when she had a bet with her brother Colt..." what had that bet been about? Riding a buffalo or flying? She did not remember, she stole a glance at Val, wondering if he would mind a not entirely factually correct tale and then realized that she had been factually incorrect this whole conversation and, where would he find the truth, if both parties involved were long dead. "...that she could jump off a big rock and fly. She did fly for a bit, but then broke her foot." 

"Smash it against sand?" Dwin leaned back and eyed Val incredulously. "How on Earth sand is going to break a material that gulls need heights and rocks to accomplish?" There was a suspicion that the man here was messing with her. She missed the fact that Val had not said anything about rocks. "What if I pick it up, go up there and then drop it?" she beckoned to the cliffs nearby. "Or - can I drown it?" while she was discussing murder, the intended victim had begun its escape towards the water edge. Dwin went after it, pounced and pinned it to the ground with both of her forepaws to prevent it from moving away. 

dwin's question posed an interesting theory. val thought of the many doglike creatures he had witnessed by or in the water. otters and seals came top on his list. he remembered being mesmerized once, having found a leopard seal's skull crudely sitting atop a series of rocks. the tide had likely dragged it up there, but what caught val's eye was how much it resembled the skulls of his own kind. the teeth were larger, of course, and the snout strangely stunted -- but the eye socket and dentition remained visually similar. upon witnessing its grotesque smile he'd gotten the unsettling vision of being dragged underwater, bubbles mixing with dark blood. maybe it is the other way around. maybe we are the result of them coming up on land, and things have gone just horribly wrong enough that we cannot go back.

finley flew? val was incredulous, but gave dwin only enough visible doubt that it couldn't be misconstrued as accusing her of lying. i guess she is lucky to have only broken a foot. he trailed after the bounding dwin, who this time managed to pin the crab against the sand.

it's like a squishy bug, dwin. val intoned bemusedly. not a rock. their carapace is not very strong compared to our teeth. i don't think you can drown it. you could try swallowing it whole if you'd like, but they are spiky while alive. whatever you do, if you pick it up by only one claw, beware of its other. they are meaner than you think.

"Oh - but I have heard about water-wolves. So - there might be some truth in what you are telling me now," Dwin put this thought on a shelf to ruminate about later. "Well - flew - like you hang in the air for a moment and then crush. That's, how she broke her foot. She was very lucky to have just a broken foot. The other option was becoming a mush - then this would mean that I would not be here talking to you and trying to figure out, how to  deal with this," the term "flying" eventually depended on the definition you assigned to it. For Dwin it was any time spent in air, for others - time was an important distinction.

She was still not convinced of the vulnerability of the crab and did not believe that hitting it against the sand would make any difference to its aggregate state. She decided to grab it whole with ther teeth, which she succeeded in - only pincers and tiny legs were left out of the side of her mouth. After letting out a short sigh she crushed her jaws and the creature disintegrated in pieces of meat and bone-like substance in her jaws. She chewed, food trickling down her chin and she swallowed, feeling every bit of the broken exoskeleton scraping against her esophagus on its way down. "I prefer non-shelled things, to be honest," she turned to Val. 

water-wolf was not so far removed from seal. val supposed if you'd never seen a seal before, much like how dwin had called the ocean the vast water thingie, she might refer to a seal as a water-wolf.

he listened with great interest as dwin recounted finley's rendition of flying. meanwhile the crab squirmed angrily between her paws. a sigh of relief left him as she finally bent to the thing and ate it, shell and all.

bad day to be a crab, he supposed. they are plentiful and easy to catch, but if you look for them they are easiest found in the morning. he supposed if he was going to eventually see dwin off, he might as well impart as much wisdom as possible. how often he had wished to have a traveling companion, who could tell him of the secrets of the world and steer him kindly away from his own youthful foibles. if you are going to travel and be on your own, you should know these things. look --

val moved off at a trot, motioning to a patch of seaweed that had been left by the receding tide. if you are really desperate, seaweed makes a quick meal. but be careful what kind you eat. green and brown are okay, but if it is rimmed in red algae you best avoid it. and! val stood over the bundle of seaweed and flipped it over with a paw. there are often crabs and mollusks here you can eat too, if you are quick enough. but don't eat jellyfish. you won't like it.

Suddenly Val's demeanor changed from that of a playmate, who humoured her, to that of an older brother, who was intent on teaching his younger sister the survival skills. Dwin had only fragmented memories of her older siblings, for they had dispersed before her birth and their presence had not been constant during her childhood to leave a lasting impression. Other adults had been fun to have around, but there was always this age gap that stood in the way and made the young Blackthorn listen to them less, when they wanted to pass on some great wisdom. 

Val - on the other hand - had proven to be just the right age (not too old to forget, what it meant to be a child, and not too young for Dwin to not take him seriously), therefore she followed him eagerly and soaked up all the valuable details that would help her survive on her own. She memorized the habits of the crabs, the shape, colour and size of the seaweeds and the other good stuff that hid beneath. About the jellyfish too, though... "But they aren't poisonous, are they? Cause many edible things are not very likeable," she cast a glance at the remnants of the crab, "but sometimes you got to eat, what you got to eat, don't you?" 

"I never asked you - have you travelled a lot?" she said. 

he'd been worried whatever he said might bounce right off of dwin like water off a duck's back, but the girl surprised him with her interest in engaging in what he had to say. no stories about moms flying, dragons, or aliens this time; dwin was all ears.

poisonous? i'm not sure. but they will sting your mouth and make you very sick. you'll know them by their smell, but they come in many shapes and sizes. val hoped they might find a bluebottle as example, but nothing besides mollusks were attached to the seaweed he turned over in his paws.

sometimes you gotta eat what you got to eat. just think, who was the first wolf to discover a clam was edible? he or she must have been very hungry. val realized that dwin might not know what a clam was. before he could explain, she prompted him with a question that made the corners of his lips turn in a little smile. oh yes. i think i was your age when i first left - a bear chased us, actually. and then i traveled inland, and saw all kinds of animals and things i never saw on the beach. but i am back here now. i figure the road will always be there for me, but my family won't be around forever.

"Yeah, but then think of all those pioneers, who tried just the wrong thing and realized that it was not okay, when it was too late? My dad said that all plants are edible - some just once," she shared. Here I - her narrator - have to add that Dwin was not very good, when it came to remembering sources of the facts she used. Therefore the simple algorithm to sort them was to assign all the story and life wisdom related stuff to Maia and all the plant and medical and moral stuff to Eljay. Regardless of whether they had ever said it or not. 

"You have a long history with bears, I see..." Dwin responded, thinking to herself that too bad there was not a real mama dragon to take care of Val's bear problem. The last part of his speech got her thinking. She had never considered that her parents could end before her. In her eyes - not only did they not age, they were constants of her world. It would sure be a lot bleaker, if they weren't there. But then... "If you stay with your family as long as they live and by the time, when you can leave to travel, your time is over too? Road may always be out there, but you might not?" 

dwin posited all things were edible, some only once. val dedicated a silent prost to her father. he sounds like a wise man. if you are not sure of something, make someone else eat it first. val's seawater green eye winked.

as far as family, the road, and their own impermanence on this earth, val had his own ideas. i suppose that depends on how you want to spend your life then. and how you want your life to impact others. a wolf on the road is known only by the birds and the trees and is forgotten as soon as their prints disappear from the soil. but a wolf who fends for his family is known for generations. what do you want your legacy to be, dwin?

Dwin burst out laughing. While she had never asked Eljay, how exactly he had obtained his knowledge about plants and medicine, it was hilarious to think that this kind old soul had his own graveyard of test subjects hidden somewhere. For example, in the lake? He had spent many, many years in caldera after all. "Yeah, I won't do that. If they die, they will get angry at me and come back to haunt me," she replied. "This will cause a whole lot of new problems."

"I want my life to be interesting," was her simple and very honest answer. Dwin had not thought much past that - it turned out that her aspiration to become the next best explorer in the world depended on other people. If there were none to tell about her grand adventures, no one would ever know. "I can't have this, if I spend my life in one place all my life," she had never understood, how her father could be content of never travelling beyond borders, never having that pull of the world outside. Quite the contrary - he disliked it, he feared it. 

"My home is a wonderful place, but there is only so much I can see and learn there," she finished. "It is like this saying... I like it a lot. About... don't stop moving. If you stop - you die. And I don't want to die, before my life has properly begun."

on the contrary, having a host of ghosts would make you very interesting. val raked back a strand of seaweed. nothing below it save little braids of sea kelp and flotsam.

val did not have the energy to point out that there could be infinite things to learn about a single place. after all, he had grown up here — and it still remained full of mystique.

but there was a truth to experiencing new things in the world too. it gave you perspective, that hard earned, dual-insight skill that eluded most their entire lives. you know, i have heard that there are some fish who live that expression — that if they cannot move, they die. maybe you are just a very poorly made fish. just make sure, as you move through the world, that you do not do so too quickly. what happens to all those little ripples you set off? you might not learn how you change those around you, or see how things change if you are always moving a mile a minute. you might miss something beautiful, like the sunset or — his eyes lit up with an idea.

you should stay still until night fall, just this once. i promise that what you see will be very interesting. val could only imagine the look on dwin’s face when she watched the waves turn phosphorescent as they crashed along the shore.