Dragoncrest Cliffs Barracuda

Please let @Quennell post first and then anyone is welcome! <3

Quen, the boy croaked wearily, lifting his eyes to the familiar line of their homeland borders. The smell of the ocean was tantalizing on the cold winter air. Wind howled along the earth, attaining a voice as it gusted around the rocks and spindly trees while other less explicable sounds scraped up the beach-head toward them.

Swordfish had been running on nothing for miles. His legs had moved simply because they had grown used to moving, to following the red-nape of his friend. The bloodied rear end of Quennell had become its own face, to Fish. He talked to it in his mind, made light of their horrible scenario, as though he were watching it from the outside.

The young wolf’s legs quaked. He tried to howl for help but the noise stopped in his throat.

it was funny how quick he had dropped weight.

an infected tail stump, that had made the whole journey home a lot worse. yet somehow the weight of his guilt outmatched all the pain he felt. he did not know that he had practically wobbled home. hardly balanced and a creeping of nerve damage from overextending.

he had become a sunken ghoul.

some parted of him debated leaving swordfish here, to be helped, then going down the coast. away from the misery he had planted in swordfish. in himself.

undoubtedly in multiple sets of family members.

he would not be surprised if @Meerkat came crashing to them at once. mama @Erzulie too maybe.

he trusted them to be found now and he allowed himself to collapse upon the border. eyes shut all at once.

he could deal with the guilt when he awoke.

Etienne was a ghost upon the borders often. There was something to be said of the silence that filled the edges of the borderlands and kept him moving with the vibrations in the earth. HE felt a feeling of dread the entire day, it had gotten worse. Could he answer why of course not. Honestly, it was probably from being so worried of the young males that his sister couldn't find. Quennell and Swordfish. He didn't know them well, but he knew enough to know they met as much to his family as did his brothers, and sister and him. That one was his uncle.

So it was with absolute tightening fear that he found the two upon the borders, broken, bloody and asleep. He forced himself to run to them, but the smell that wafted from their wounds and the way they lay so still. He couldn't get much closer to them as of yet.

One still stood and he raced forward anxiousness coloring his face, as he tried to find cobwebs, aloe, and howl for his manman @Chacal, His granme @Rosalyn anyone who could hear him @Sobo.

He licked at the face of his uncle. His voice scared and high in his words. Tonton Quen. There was so much blood and bile. His stomach rolled and boiled. How he wanted to throw up there in the sand, but this was a time of action not reaction.
All this did was reaffirm, that you left the borders and terrible things happened.

Swordfish? he croaked at the boy only a few moons older than him,

If I got any details wrong, please let me know so I can fix!

Meerkat was a mess. It was bad enough that Swordfish and Quennell were long overdue, now @Njord was out there searching for the boys. She would’ve insisted on going with him but he hadn’t told her himself, sending a messenger to let her know he was headed further afield. She couldn’t fault him, though neither could she bear being apart from her husband, not after…

She was no guardian, yet she paced the borders all the same. Dried tears streaked her cheeks. Meerkat continually argued with herself about joining the search and was in the throes of a particularly poignant fit of desperation when Ètienne’s quavering howl stopped her in her tracks.

He wasn’t calling for her but the urgency of his summons made her burst into a sprint. And when she arrived, it was any mother’s worst fear realized: her son, sickly and wounded, swayed at the borders, Quennell slumped beside him. Meerkat rushed to them, eyes flitting from the gashes in Fish’s hide to the bloody stump on his companion’s rear.

The noise that came out of her mouth wasn’t so much a howl as a wretched scream for help. Meerkat then pressed in close to Swordfish, nosing him with restraint, sobbing breaths puffing against the fur of his flank where it was torn.

quennell bore a bloodied stump of a tail and swordfish a horrendous set of clawmarks.
bear.
the howling and meerkat's anguished scream brought her quickly, but not without her stores of powdered kelp and wet leaves from the same plant, aloe, lavender root, dandelion petals, and poppyseeds.
she bent over swordfish first. "meerkat," she said in a firm voice, hoping to cut through the young woman's panic. "chew de root," she said, pushing the lavender forward. "spread it along de cuts. eti," she said to her grandson, shoving the dandelion flowers and wet kelp toward the boy. "clean quen's woun', sprinkle de dandelion, wrap de tail in dis leaf. it will constrict as it dries, oui?"
she herself turned back to swordfish and she administered the first dose of poppy. "relax, mon cher, be still."
and then quennell! she divided her attention between swordfish's lacerations and helping etienne wrap the place where her son's tail had been.
and she did not panic.
"de will come to my den," she decided. the roja cave had been a place of healing before. it would be so again.

Chacal was barely within earshot when the call went up from her son, frightened and pleading for help. She dreaded the sight of Swordfish and Quennell, who were late getting back. Her son sounded flustered. 

Meerkat’s voice was a yowl of pain and dismay. She deduced that Swordfish and Quennell were back and that they were in pain. The Tanzanite was miles and miles away, patrolling along the beach. 

She sent up a howl to let the others know she was on her way, but she was completely on the other end of the pack’s claim.

Etienne’s cry was shocking. To sound so urgent and so loud? Surely something was wrong. She pulled herself from her slump; she’s allowed herself time to simply pine for the boys who’d gone off, and had stayed away too late. She’d worried quietly. 

Once she realized the call was for healers a sinking feeling push into her chest. The boys were back- but they were in pain. She bounded through the tangle back toward the borders.

The sight of them caused her to whimper. Swordfish with deep, long gouges and Quennell with old blood dried to his back end where his tail should have been. ”Oh no no no no!” She whimpered, carefully drawing nearer when she could fit into a gap between healers. ”Oh, Quennell, your tail,” she said, before she turned to assess Stingray. 

Her eyes filled with tears and she began to sob silently, hiccoughing as she tried to keep it all in. Feeling utterly useless, she lay herself beside him, so he might lay his head against her side where she was softest and warmest. There, she would soothe his brown with kisses hoping to inspire him to get better

Last for me. <3

Many wolves found them.

Swordfish lifted his eyes, dazedly looking from one face to the next. His head lolled back while he searched for Quennell, worried that something would happen to the other boy. It felt like they had miles to go, still. Home wasn’t real beneath his paws. The touches of concern were not real, either. It was not until his mother’s sobs reached his ears that he understood.

They were home. They had made it home.

Swordfish slumped against the earth. Instructions were spoken to the wolves who were there. The young seafarer could not keep up with them. He didn’t know what was happening. Everyone’s haste was making him queasy. Until Suzu appeared, features creased with worry.

The girl approached Quennell, inspecting where his tail was nothing more than a bloodied stump. When her gaze found Swordfish, the boy stared back vacantly. One thump of his tail was all that he could offer before darkness sucked him away.

entirely skippable now! pp as needed

if he mumbled and grumbled under his breath, it was in an unaware haze. slipped somewhere comfortably between awake and gone.

some part of him thought he heard the waves in his ears, that he could smell the whale that has washed on icy shores.

he remembered good things.

but soon he dreamed of all the terrible things.

away from the world of those around him, lost to his own mind.

Etienne looked at Missus Meerkat. She seemed beyond any reason. So he stepped in to chew on the root of the lavender. As he did so, he spread ita long the cuts he saw. His medium paws nimbly working. He emptied his mind of all things and just did as asked. HE chewed, he pressed the root in the wounds.

He bent to the task of cleaning the blood and the bile from Quen. It was wretched, but he did it all without complaint. lick, sprinkle, wrap. Over and over again, until it became a mantra in his head.

There was no realization of the tears that rolled from his golden eyes, or the small tremor in his paw. He was just doing as best he could with the moments given.

He would bend his back to help the two young men to granme's den and then somewhere quiet and away. He would give into the anguish that threatened to overtake him from all teh emotions that pressed on him.


And he felt it all. All of them. He could feel the ghosts of pain, the anquish that Meerkat gave him. It was enough to make the boy lose his balance, fall to his knees, but he pressed on.

Swordfish scarcely seemed to recognize his own mother, which made Meerkat all the more frantic. When he slumped, she made to catch him in her arms, gently easing him to the ground beside Quennell. As she turned her head to look at the other boy, she caught Erzulie’s approach, quickly followed by her command.

It took her a moment to collect herself, though she nodded and took the proffered roots, at least what Etienne left her. It wasn’t as unpleasant as she expected, though Meerkat hardly registered the flavor. She chewed the lavender to a pulp, then spat it into her own paw. Carefully, she maneuvered so she could reach either young man, taking a seat and dabbing her paw into the mixture and applying it with her free hand. Both hands shook.

Dimly, she registered Chacal’s howl in the distance and, more closely, Suzu’s heart-wrenching sobs. Nearer still, Etienne applied his own salve, much more calmly than Meerkat could manage. He then moved on to other tasks, leaving the Laramite to gently smear what was left as gently as she could on the boys’ broken skin.

By the time they were tended and Erzulie said they would move them to the roja den, Meerkat was openly crying over her son. Her paws, now empty, hovered over the angry gashes on his side, as if she wished she could draw the pain out of them and into herself.

last for me! <33

meerkat and etienne worked well. 
the two boys were settled and the ruby would remain vigilant all through this first night.
when a moment permitted, she meant to offer a soft touch or embrace to meerkat, murmuring in french and thinking of scarab.
always scarab.

Last for me; we can assumed Chacal caught up with them en route.

It was miserable, seeing the boys like this. They were her friends, and seeing them beat, bloody, dismembered and falling unconscious rattled her deeply. She kept herself together long enough to help with getting them back to the Roja den, and when her mother showed up and saw the terror on her face, she was embraced, and told lovingly to go and get some rest. 

Blood still made her sick to her stomach- shock had delayed her normal response until she got close to the den at the edge of the meadow. She would sob herself to sleep that night, howling with worry.

The journey to the den passed in a blur. Meerkat’s body would likely ache later from the exertion of helping drag the dead weight of two grown boys, though she couldn’t possibly care about that. She wanted to make Swordfish as comfortable as possible, Quennell too.

When they were finally settled, she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. She hovered in the den’s doorway, unable to take her eyes off her son. Dimly, she registered Erzulie speaking softly to her and offering a hug. Meerkat accepted it, though eyes fixed on the gashes in Fish’s flank as she wrung her hands. She had never felt so helpless.