Cerulean Cape young, scrappy, and hungry

Having never seen the ocean before, approaching it makes him a little leery. The crashing waves are louder than he expected and the wind whips around him, tussling his thick fur to and fro. The tips already feel wet and sticky with salt clinging to his the edges. He shakes his head, ears back against his skull, as he approaches. Little is happening out in the water but he doesn’t know what to look for other than the waves hitting the sandy beach of the cape.

Ukko shuffles back a few steps, grinding his jaws, and begins to walk away from the coast. The salty air is a little much for his liking but maybe it’s something someone could get used to. It’s colder with the chilly wind whipping around him and he’d rather find somewhere inland to stay, out of the wetness surrounding him.

@Gristle.

He roamed far, despite the long journey from the canyon. Despite the fact that his stomach yearned for more. He was always so hungry. The brute passed several trails on his way towards the coast — his interest had been piqued upon seeing the view, never having seen a body of water quite so large — but he did not make for any. He knew it was foolish to go at a herd alone. Yet he craved fresh meat.

The ocean would not offer what he wanted, yet Gristle made towards it, curious. Besides, if he and his company were to settle here, may as well map out the lands.

Nose to the ground, the male picked up scents of every kind. Strange, foreign, salty scents that caused his muzzle to crinkle in reaction. One stood out amongst them, a certain wolfish smell; one he followed to a peninsula and began loping onto the land that stretched out into the ocean. Already he could see the black figure heading back inland, quite a distance away but not so much that Gristle could see that he quite obviously also wolf. He let out a huff of disdain.

Distracted by the water crashing around him, salt and wind in every direction, he doesn’t notice the scent of the other wolf approaching. It whips away from him before he gets a chance to connect and so when he looks up, he’s a little startled to see another. Ukko stiffens in place, the sandy ground beneath him not the sturdiest to remain in one spot for long. Eventually, he moves again to close the distance—he’s gotta get by anyway, right?

He doesn’t recognize the wolf by the way he looks and, once he catches the scent, by smell either. None of the packs he’s aware of have a scent like this one but he doesn’t openly question it the closer he gets. For now, Ukko just wants firm, frozen ground beneath his feet and somewhere to shake off the salt embedded into his fur. Ukko chuffs once he’s close enough but he barely hears it himself, possibly losing it to the wind entirely as the distance between them closes.

The wind tugged at his fur also, but Gristle was so used to the wind tunnels that had formed in the canyon that he paid it no mind. The salt stung his nose, though, and he continuously swiped his tongue across his jaws to rid himself of the sensation. Why one would even be out here confused him, and he began to wonder why he was even waiting for them to return from the cape. The man almost decided to not waste his time and turn back inland when the other noticed him.

He was slowly heading his way — a sizeable, black-furred male. Lucky for the stranger, he was very much pureblooded wolf. Anything else and Gristle was prone to treat them with extreme prejudice, for no other reason besides the fact that they were different. Inferior. He caught his greeting before the wind swept it away, yet ignored it with a toss of his head. "This place is not habitable," he stated dumbly (and loudly, over the howling of the wind and crashing of the waves). There was an unspoken question at the end, for Gristle assumed the stranger lived here and wondered why he chose such a strange place.

When he is close enough, the stranger speaks, and Ukko tilts his head slightly at the observation. He stands there for a moment, considering it, looking back the way he’d came. Living here hadn’t exactly been in his plans, even if he didn’t have any at the moment. Part of him expected to come all this way to see the ocean and only turn back around and go home. He’d find that Phoenix Maplewood is for him, after all, and he’d find his footing as beta and prove the both of them wrong.

The epiphany hasn’t occurred and he’s only standing near some lone wolf he doesn’t recognize, that doesn’t have a smell that seems familiar at all. “Okay,” he says instead, narrowing his eyes a little while he takes a few more steps inland. 

“You lookin’ for a place to stay?” he asks, ears cupped forward despite the wind tickling them. He doesn’t quite shift into a dominant posture, so far from the place he’s been calling home for the last several months and he’d been considering finding shelter elsewhere.

Wednesday moved, trailing Gristle but giving him a wide berth. Her interest in the ocean was not large by any stretch of the word. Twice she had found a meal grander than she could have ever dreamed of laying upon the shore, but the hunting generally required too much effort aside from fishing. Wednesday found more dead things to scavenge on land than she did by the ocean, which took more than it gave in her experience.

It was only when Gristle was joined that Wednesday marched toward him. Her own bearing was dominant, but not in a loud manner; she simply felt she possessed Gristle, but that needed no posturing on her behalf. He seemed to know it, too. The large bear of a wolf was a yoke 'round his neck he would not escape... unless she, or someone else, killed him.

The pale wolf did not even hear the question the other posed. The wind whipped in her eardrums, even though they cupped to try and catch a syllable. Wednesday looked to the other with her yellow eyes, mute interest there. She was an opportunist, and she wondered what—other than the meat on his bones—he offered.