Ankyra Sound gone gone gone

@Caiaphas

It had been days since the storm had passed, and those very days were spent in blackness. Shego would never get those days back, but at long last the battered and bruised wretch rose and spewed forth thin strings of seaweed and brine both. Unsteadily she rose to all fours, worse for wear but quite alive. Well, of course; it was not time to cut her own chord. The vessel that carried Atropos was beneath a rocky outcropping, where she blended well with the shadows and disappeared when the tide rose. The rocks were high enough to keep her out of the waters reach, but were she not shoved and wedged between a narrow space her story would have ended (deny it though she would).

The tide was low, and so she scuttled onto the sand as clumsily as a crab who had lost a leg would. She sneezed what felt like a thousand times, ridding her nose of salt and whatever else had crawled into there and she had hosted.

Her face puckered into a sour, displeased look, and the bedraggled witch looked to the sky and sniffed. She remembered a storm, but hadn't any idea in the slightest how she had ended up here. Against the winds she had been as frail as a leaf and as such she had been tossed and beaten to the sea. In the end, she ended up upon this Sound.

Whatever. Time to head back. Wherever that was. She had her vertigo to thank, and she clung to the ground like some pissed cat, back hunched and hackles lifted. Shego stumbled forward, even as the world continued to spin.

so i'm really dumb and forgot about this.. sorry

along the shattered rocks the sea waif languished, half hiding from the scolding sun. her triangular ears swept neatly forward when a series of sneezes assuaged the shore, otherwise disrupting the monotony of white noise the heaving sea offered. intrigued but not necessarily motivated enough to outwardly investigate, caiaphas rose to a sitting position where only the tip of her ears and slender muzzle were comically visible from the flowstone.

she thought she saw movement and when her eyes trained on something visibly sodden and moving, she realized it was a coywolf. not one to engage in conversation, caiaphas simply watched -- a bland expression coalescing across the darkness of her muzzle.

Shego herself was not one to hide from company or conversation both. But Caiaphas was, in fact, well enough hidden that the manic girl-woman did not see her.

Her nostrils were too sand-ridden to be of much use this second. Even if the wind were to be in her favor, it would prove no good. Unwittingly she moved into the direction of the woman who watched her; the look in her own eye was perfectly caustic (if only she could truly burn or destroy with them, truly) as she continued to bumble onward. It would take some minutes before she found her legs... up until then, she looked drunk.

as the rime-washed thing contorted towards her, caiaphas had to refrain from recoiling. the coywolf's sodden steps emulated something that had spent too much time among apple-sours -- caiaphas watched her warily, wondering if the female was indeed afflicted by the salty tongue of the brine.

she didn't say anything, but stood to attention with limbs splayed by readiness. she was not sure what this water-wretch was doing -- and whether or not she was rabid or simply disoriented the sea waif had no intention of letting shego too close.

The ungainly thing paused, breathed, and gathered herself. And stumbled drunkenly forward again, letting out a sharp snarl. She scuttled more than she walked, and in due time she scuttled close enough to see that there was another there, on the defensive.

"H-" she coughed, throat dry and burning for water. Dehydration. Her priorities shifted as she lurched toward the other, green eyes rimmed with the red of irritation. "drinking water," came her gravelly throat, rough with disuse, painful in its being used.

she visibly veered away from the thing as it nearly collapsed, swinging towards her like some vorpal shade. caiaphas nimbly leaped back, her countenance pinched in narrowed suspicion. but when the shewolf (she-coy?) spoke there was a distinct desperation tied beneath the hoarseness of her voice.

caiaphas thought for a moment. a lazy sweep of a forelimb was given towards the sea, as implying the grey-faced ocean was a source of succulent replenishment. she waited only a second before pivoting away from the sorry rag of fur and bones. she stopped along a distorted tree limb and peered back to see if the coywolf was following her.

Shego's face drew backward at the others gesture, bringing emphasis to the gauntness of it. It was by no means an attractive expression, but one of someone who truly had tasted something bitter and fully intended to spew it out. And she had... when the other moved. Shego did not wait. She followed.

The other could lead her to her death. But without water, she was dead, anyway... and the sea the other had again drawn to her attention was the only source of water in sight for miles. Shego had not much mileage left in her; already she had been asleep for days... and she would pay the price, should she not be assisted. That the other looked back was enough to incite hope... and she began to stumble less and less.

a sliver of malice worked its way into caiaphas' thoughts - for a moment she delightedly entertained the idea of leading this poor waif astray. the gauntness of her features, skin loose and weak along depraved muzzle, evoked little compassion from the sea witch. the prospect of a joker's ultimate prank, some final prelude that lead to an ultimate and irrevocable event -- this tempted caiaphas and for a moment the wretch swayed in balance between Samaritan and iniquity.

but in the end the reprobate in her receded and she willfully brought the dark supplicate to a source of water. it was not compassion that fueled her, but the ambition to have something, anything, to sink her claws into. when they drew closer to a small brook she picked up the pace, loping easily along the shale until she was upon the stream. it was small, a weak trickle lead astray by natural disaster -- and while the dark coywolf drank her fill caiaphas elected to hang back and wait.

It took little time to get there. But there it was, wayward and out of place, but still there.

Shego moved on quavering legs and bent to drink. Her long ears fall toward the multihued thing, and before long she finished, thirst quenched. Satisfied, and needing nothing else now, Shego cast her gaze back to Caiaphas who still remained. The wretch kept her own distance, knowing she was no equal match after her time alone. Her skin tented in places unseen thanks to her furs, but she was truly affected by her time without water and was the opposite of well in a multitude of ways.

While this was the territory of none, the other knew it better than she. Normally, Shego was the furthest thing from compliant. The miserable thing liked to cause her own disasters, but was in no condition to do so here and now. She thought of skulking off, but remained still.

she studied her newfound comrade, her eyes wandering without shyness. she noted the woeful pitch of shego's spine, raised and angular like some battleworn pallisade. the lackluster film of her coarse coat. caiaphas examined her own sleek leg, and in contrast, suddenly felt quite good about herself.

she was surprised that shego did not leave once she had drank her fill.  caiapahas cast about for some sort of icebreaker but her wit and tongue failed her -- instead she looked sullenly down the stream. eventually she stirred into conversation, her gaze lifting to shego's to see if the female registered what she was saying. "not too many packs here. lots of food on the shore. you familiar with the area?" she was guessing the flotsam-coywolf was likely not, considering her arrival had been only minutes before by wave-wash.

She was no beauty, presently. Everything upon her was thrown into disarray. Seasalt had done her fur no favor at all. Shego was dull and lackluster, all aside from her eyes that carried a violence similar to the sort the storm had wrought. Her plans were thrown asunder; she needed a cub. A sister. Had Lakhesis survived this?

The other spoke and she returned to the corporeal world, her mind no longer wandering. She hoarsely responded, "No," but her throat was not so dry this time that she could not go on to say more. "There was a storm. And then, I woke here." But the word food had appealed to her, and the violent light was gone. Now, a curious one. It was clear that this one was familiar with the area, to know all this... and Shego was intrigued.

"I lost a cub I was meant to look after during the storm," she pitched, "White. Pretty. One eye..." Potema. "Have you seen her?"

she rested as the coywolf spoke, her ears drawn forward in interest. the dark and ragged creature revealed the nature of her conundrum and how she had come to be spat on the sandy shore. caiaphas was bemused - it was not the first thing the sea had offered her. a pang of guilt then overrode her callous heart -- was this the mothers, punishing her for her waywardness?

the female mentioned a cub and it was this that anchored a newfound interest in the shewolf. caiaphas still mourned kevlyn's loss -- there were many nights she patrolled the barren sea haunted by the intensity of her grief. but even then, knowing a mother's sorrow, she did not extend platitudes to the female. "have not seen a pup." she said coarsely, perhaps a little callously.

but then again, no one had helped her through her loss of kevlyn -- and without a word, caiaphas left shego to lament on the shore.