Stavanger Bay When the sun is high

She'd been in the bay of the seawolves for about a week, and was beginning to miss home. She missed Tambourine and his playful nature. She missed Banner and her games, the alpha's easy-going nature. She missed Amara in spite of her dismissiveness, and she even missed Kavos and Eros even though they treated her poorly, generally.

She loved the shore, though. The sand felt funny under her soft paw pads and she was enamored with the glitter of the ocean. Its cruel nature was not yet known to her, she saw only beauty in it, and loved it immensely. Prialux was torn between two worlds, the old one at the willows and the new one on the beach, and it left her in a less sunny mood than usual.

Still, she skipped along the beach in her usual fashion, kicking dark sand and pebbles up as she went. Her face was a bit flatter without its full, cheek-to-cheek beam as she sought out @Murgash, hoping to ask when he would bring her back to the willows while simultaneously not wanting to leave.

Tag is just for reference, it's open to anyone (including Murgy if you want it). :)

She'd not seen Qilaq in some time - Skellige's brood had kept her busier than her own children ever had, especially since she was still tending to those three as well. The days passed quickly, and Doe had lost track of her eldest child in all the fuss of pups and winter. It weighed heavily on the red mother, especially in light of Furiosa's death and the quickly-approaching day of the Three's Drop.

So Doe searched for her daughter, calling out Qilaq's name-sound as she scaled the beach. The youngest children had been left with Muses while Doe allowed Julep, Whiskey, and Isengrim to wander to their heart's content. She hoped that someone would stop them before they went into the water, but at this point, she knew that they would all be tested soon. Qilaq had survived this negligent approach to parenting, at any rate.

At least, she had until now. Doe realized that she could not speak for her dark-furred daughter's health. It'd been more than a week since she'd last seen her, and when she searched for her now, her scent was hard to find, and it was not Qilaq's darkling form that bounded upon the sand, but a paler one than Doe currently knew.

Sharky? she thought, but the name was quickly discounted. This one was younger than Sharkbait had been even when they first found her, and the Deserter would be even older, now.

Doe chuffed to the other wolf, moving closer but stopping a few feet away before she hailed the girl with a muffled yap, tail wagging absently behind her. Inwardly, she worried that there would soon be too many mouths to feed, but these things were not for her to decide. If she was here, then Skellige knew of her and had approved of her presence.

The wolf-child stopped suddenly on the dark sand and turned about in response to a sound from another, one that rose above the constant din of wave on shore. Overhead, a gull cried loudly, stealing the girl's attention for a second before she fixated on Doe. She was unused to these noisy birds. The Keep was full of ravens and crows and owls, but gulls rarely went there. Here on the open shore, gulls and albatrosses abounded, pelicans occasionally surfaced, and the rare bald eagle skimmed the waves. She was unfamiliar with them all, and they invariably drew her attention whenever they appeared.

But now it was on Doe, and she inspected the woman with a quiet, shy scrutiny, as if searching for any sign of ill will. In the Keep, Prialux approached all adults openly and readily, just as she had Murgash. That was comfort taking the reins. The bay, however, was an unfamiliar place, and these were unfamiliar wolves. Here, timidity reigned supreme within little Lux, who seated herself on the cold sand and drooped her head a little lower in bashful deference.

Nevertheless, shy as she may be with strangers when she was nowhere near home, Prialux was still an outgoing and desperately social child, so she called out, "hi!" in just as sprightly a tone as she always did, her voice not matching her appearance at all.

The child pressed herself against the sand, an action which would normally please Doe, but now twisted uncomfortably at her heartstrings. "Hi!" she repeated, adopting the girl's vernacular in an attempt at camaraderie, lowering her own body as she trotted toward the girl, intent on thoroughly investigating her.

"What's your name?" she asked when she'd drawn near enough that the wind would not whip away her murmurs. A snipey nose was extended to poke curiously at the girl's sides, heedless of any protest she might have to this action. Snuffling mightly into the pale fur of the child, Doe surmised that she must have come only recently to the bay - there was still an earthy scent to the girl. One that Doe associated with the tiny Qilaq she'd stolen from the woods, but not the almost-grown Qilaq she called her daughter.

The pup's thin tail beat at her hocks when the older she-wolf, whose one ear fell to the side in a way she immediately tried (and failed) to mimic with her own ear, greeted her in turn. How exciting! Regardless that this was unfamiliar territory and Prialux was quite homesick, she was always open to attention. She was starved for it, in a way. Amara had, in the end there, become a better parent than in the long forgotten earliest days of Prialux's life, but she'd still deprived her brood of enough attention to last them all a lifetime, and she drank it up from others like water. That Lux was different from her morose brothers in this way was truly a miracle.

She did shrink a little when Doe approached so straight-forwardly, but when the thin beach wolf snuffed at her coat, she giggled girlishly and recoiled. "Teeckles," she protested though her tail betrayed her when it picked up speed with excitement, and when asked her name, she breathily added, "Preeloos!" Okay, well, someday she'd be able to pronounce it properly. Until then, she was young enough to answer to pretty much any name.

Pree... Preela... Preeloo? Preel?  Doe wasn't quite sure what the girl has said, but decided to go with the first optio, as it was the least complicated. "It's nice to meet you, Pree," she said, having finished her inspection of the girl. She seemed hale and healthy enough. "I'm Doe - aren't you cold out here?" she asked, for the wind was whipping rather fiercely, as it had done for most of the season thus far. At least she wasn't wet yet - her own children could hardly be kept from the water, and Doe had as hard a time keeping them warm as she did dry.