Wheeling Gull Isle four in the morning

All aboard the Vargas Island train. ♥ @Amoxtli and @Sirimiri, I would like if you could post in here just to have an IC conclusion. For your future information and for documentation purposes, Amoxtli and Sirimiri are YOUR characters. They will never be adopted back out. You can play them wherever you wish to, although I’d love to know if you play them elsewhere so I can stalk them. Feel free to bring them back anytime, or to never bring them back at all. Thanks for loving Coelacanth.

It had never been Brontide Corten’s intention to stay on his niece’s island — or any island, for that matter. He figured that’s why Cortens were such prolific swimmers — so no matter where they were, they could R U N N O F T whenever their paws got itchy. Nosing at his littermates, “What do you think, kids?” he asked. “Head home and tell mom and dad about all the young upstarts they raised?” His grin was fond as he looked out toward where Morningside was located, then at the approaching form of the little’uns. They moved like soul and shadow, Seelie’s smaller frame in lockstep with her twin. He read the protest in Coelacanth’s eyes and answered it plainly: “You wouldn’t want us to forget all the new songs and stories we learned, would you?” he asked rhetorically. “Someone’s gotta run home and tell your papa that you’re the alpha of your own island and Catori’s about to be a mom, right? Not to mention, you’re an old, married woman now,” he teased.

In jest, he turned to Amoxtli: “Whaddaya think, sprout?” he asked. “Feel like leading your ailing elders home and visiting with Chelan for awhile?” He chuckled at the other two “ailing elders” and received a nip to his hindquarters from Serein in response.

The weight of his heart was almost enough to have smothered him. Amoxtli had been so eager to find his sweet sister again, but he knew that he was eager to return to their home. There had been a distinct lacking - family - in his life. Catori had built a home for herself, Seelie had founded her own pack and was leading it with grace, but the Tervuren wolfdog did not know his own place in the world. It left him with a sense of emptiness; all he wanted was to fill it with pieces of those that he loved. The boy was eager to see them and to surround himself with their culture and life in ways he had not before.
 
Trailing after the group, Amoxtli turned to peer at the land that his sister had claimed. He was proud of her and his eyes brimmed with tears at the sight of it. When he was mentioned, his ears drew forward and he lifted his head upward to look at Corten. A small smile curled his dark lips and he nodded his head slowly in response to the question. The though of leaving behind his twin left a pang in his chest that he could only subside by brushing his muzzle against her skull and sighing gently. If he could carry her scent with him for the rest of his days, Oxtli would have.
 
With a few small kisses to her muzzle, the tan and ink-colored Corten pulled himself from her side and looked at her with love in his eyes. His expression spoke all of his emotions, and he silently vowed that he would return to her in a few months and that he would live in her pack and be with her for the rest of her days. Then, facing Brontide, Amoxtli motioned for him to lead the way before he had the opportunity to change his mind.  

Sirimiri cast a regretful look toward the island's interior; part of her had felt that the reunion with Komodo had been fated, and that it might finally be time for her to settle down, if only for a few seasons to raise a few pups. But she'd seen the way that Seelie and Stockholm had been looking at each other, and she knew that the island wasn't her place to raise a brood.

And besides - at the end of the day, she was still rather eager to be on her way. Sad to leave Seelie and Catori, of course, but adventure had always been her destiny. Not any man.

"Let's get this show on the road," Serein agreed, and Sirimiri echoed in an equally kitschy manner - one that probably made the younger generation groan and roll their eyes. But there would be plenty more of that back at Vargas Island, and plenty of excitement along the way.

To have found him only to lose him again — Coelacanth held onto her composure, but just barely. Had she been human, the delicate bones of her wrists would have jutted alarmingly with the violent wrenching of her helpless hands, fingers white-knuckled, nails cracked and bleeding from scrabbling so fiercely to cling to a precipice she did not own. She went first to her uncle and was swiftly swept up against his lean chest in a warm embrace. “Oh, now,” he chided her gently, knowing all the while he was attempting to make light of a situation that for Seelie was a heavy, funereal abyss, “it’ll be okay, heart’s ease.” She drew no comfort from the words, but schooled her finely drawn features into a reassuring smile and turned to exchange fond farewells with her aunts.

Only half-listening to their reassurances, she forced herself to face the hardest goodbye of all. Though she longed to break down and beg him to stay, the littlest Corten greeted her twin with a gentle, sorrowful smile — and only she knew how much this façade cost her. “I am always with you,” she promised him, nosing at his cheek and pressing her tiny body along the length of his. The sexual dimorphism of their breed dictated a difference in size and a thickening of the long fur of Amoxtli’s ruff, but she fit perfectly beside him as she always had and rubbed her cheek lovingly against his withers, breathing deeply of his scent before drawing away. Prolonging this would make it harder on both of them, and so, despite the guilt she felt at doing so, she kissed her only brother goodbye and gave him a parting gift: a fiery chunk of spectrolite from the labyrinth, polished smooth by the roll of sand and sea. Then she turned and quietly trotted away, an uncharacteristic heaviness in her gait.

Distance would make it impossible for any of the quartet to see her shaking shoulders and pain-tautened mouth — but she would watch them until they disappeared from view. Her chosen vantage point was Skybowl. She clambered up the little caldera’s slope and watched her family go, a miniscule ink drawing of a tuft-eared sheepdog silhouetted against the weeping sky.

Stockholm had never been terribly close with his family; not the way Seelie was with hers at least. When he was old enough to be on his own he had been sent out into the fields to guard a herd, his brothers had been sent elsewhere to do the same. The job came before family back then. And he always faithfully held his post. In the cold months when the herds came in closer to the human villages he would sometimes have the opportunity to cross paths with his brothers or his father, but it was always a brief interaction, and never punctuated with the kind of affection he had seen shared among Seelie’s brethren. Still, he did care for them. He understood the ties of family and the importance of it.

The connection between Seelie and her sandy-hued twin was particularly strong, he could see that from the moment he first saw them interact. This must feel like losing a part of herself all over again, and so soon after being reunited. It pains him to know she will suffer the heartbreak, even if they would return again soon.

He lingers in the distance, lets Seelie say her goodbyes, and gives her time alone to process the initial waves of the storm that batter at her heart. Only when the quartet is gone from sight, only when he can bear the thought of her being alone no longer does he ascend the caldera to the top of the Skybowl to stand beside her. Gaze on the horizon, he stands quiet and still for a long moment before moving to brush his side against hers, turning his head to lay it across her shoulders, his breath warm against her neck. He says nothing, but tries to convey it with his presence. I’m here. I will always be here for you. It will be alright.

Paging @Moorhen, when life gets less crazy. ♥

By the time the Gampr made his way to his Groenendael’s side, she was as low as a dog could be, draped over the thinnest part of the Skybowl’s verdant ring with her tail blurring like cuttlefish ink in the water and her muzzle on a faint downward slope from the frail slump of her shoulders. Only her eyes moved when he approached, luminous with a limitless wellspring of tears, saline tangling in her lashes to be listlessly blinked away. The caldera’s mirrorlike surface stirred as her tail flicked once or twice — she was happy to see him, even if she lacked the wherewithal to convey it! — and then her gaze drifted away, pinning itself on where she’d last seen her twin.

A hiccupping sigh tripped from her trembling lips as Stockholm bolstered her with his comforting warmth, the treasured heaviness of his great head a grounding weight across her shoulders. His nearness anchored her, and she could not lose herself wholly to her grief — and for Seelie, in this moment, that was good. She had Stockholm, and he had promised her that this would always be the case. Still, it was a long moment before she moved at all, tearing her attention away from the horizon line to settle on the plush fur of her mate’s broad chest. A tearful whuffle saw her finely tapered snout burying with vehement need into the crook of his throat, and then she put her own needs aside. In case Moorhen had witnessed any of the commotion, Seelie wanted to offer comfort and reassurance — and, more selfishly, to glean added comfort from her lamb.

“M-Moorhen,” she whispered to her mate in a hitching, snuffling whisper-whine, beseeching him with kisses and nosing pointedly at his shoulder. Together, they rose sluggishly to their paws and followed a series of cascades down Skybowl’s slope to the western part of the island where they usually slept, Moorhen along with them. Though she could not call out for the banded female, the sheepdog was in full search mode, her graceful muzzle alternating between hovering over the ground and tasting the air for the Cairn girl’s scent. Now and again, she whuffed or boofed, though she didn’t yet have a call for the mahogany-eyed lamb the way she did Stockholm.

As soon as Moorhen sense that she was being hailed, she left the salty shores and ventured inland, tail whisking idly as she honed in on the presence of Shadow and Stockholm.

"Sad!" she barked as soon as she caught sight of her dark shepherd, the fur along the back of her neck bristling in protective anger. She was ready to beat the culprit within an inch of their life. "Who sad?" she demanded, turning to Stockholm for answers.

The Gampr remains silent and steadfast by Coelacanth’s side, giving her all the time she needs. If she wanted to stay here all night, then that is what they would do. But eventually she moves, buries her face into his neck and he murmurs softly to her, a low rumble in his throat. Here. Always here. He bumps his head against hers, letting her stay entangled with him until she is ready to go; and they descend the Skybowl together to seek out Moorhen. Which ends up being a rather easy task, as the young girl is also seeking them.

His ears perk forward at the sound of her voice, laced with protective aggravation at the sight of Seelie’s distress – despite putting on her brave face his mate still appears rather woeful to those who know her well enough. The Armenian is quick to explain in an attempt to soothe away the bristling hackles, though admittedly it warms his heart greatly to see someone else so protective of his Aralez. “Amoxtli, Sirimiri and Serein have left with Brontide to return to Vargas Island.”

Stockholm’s explanation, succinct to Seelie, might not have made as much sense to the protective Cairn girl; Coelacanth found it best to elaborate. “My b-brrrother go home,” she explained in a tremulous whisper. She stepped forward and lifted her finely drawn skull, seeking to nibble at Moorhen’s withers and smooth the wildfire of hackles with her tongue. “All well,” she promised, looking warmly from Moorhen to Stockholm and back again. “My lamb, Moorhen; my mate, Stockholm,” she named them. They were still here with her; she still had reasons to smile. “Our island,” she added. Someday, she thought, Moorhen might lead this island as part of its Council — only if she wanted to, of course, and only if she was ready. Right now, she wasn’t, but someday she might be — and if that day came, Seelie would help her honor her seafaring blood.

"Oh," said Moorhen, looking between her two protectors. "Um," she said carefully, coming to sandwich the Shadow between her lamb and her mate. She didn't know what it was like to have family leave. Not really, at least. Her father and siblings had left when she was young, and -

belatedly, she remembered that day on the beach, when Julep and Isengrim had gone one way, Doe's Shadow in another, and she had been left alone in the sand. For a moment, she wanted to fold down like the seashell she had been that day, but instead she leaned a little closer, and the moment passed.

"I im here," she said at last, nuzzling the Shadow's cheek. "And Stock."

Stockholm nods. “Always here,” he echoes, a low rumble of affirmation and assurance disappearing into the indelible ink of his Aralez’s feathery pelage. Close-cropped ears are carefully canted toward Seelie, and when she indicates at last that she is ready to put her grief to bed, he and Moorhen begin moving in tandem into a small hollow tucked in Skybowl’s shadow.

They keep the Groenendael sandwiched between them as they curl together for the night and fall asleep at last. The Armenian is the last to fall asleep, and it’s uncertain whether he actually allows himself to surrender fully. He is driven by a deep desire to watch and protect, whatever the cost, and keeps his blocky head pillowed on his mate’s withers.