Wheeling Gull Isle that’s the loudest i become

Backdated to April 23, 2018. @Moorhen, maybe? ♥ This can be a Read Only if not.

Coelacanth’s oven is preheated and ready for pupcakes.

The atramentous sheepdog sank shakily into one of the many forest pools nestled in the Skybowl’s skirts, coiling below surface like a tiny crocodile. Tufted ears and the crown of her finely drawn skull remained above surface, button nose dipping underwater now and again to blow streams of quietly discontented bubbles between breaths. The fever she’d contracted shortly before reaching Morningside had intensified into an outright blaze — and the memory of Moorhen’s incensed words, rooted in love and worry though they were, struck painfully at her psyche. “I am sorry,” she wanted to say with confident fluency, “I had to go. I should have waited. I am sorry.”

Stockholm was gone. Stockholm was gone because Seelie had made him go, and Moorhen was worried because Stockholm was gone because Seelie had made him go. “Moorhen,” she wheedled desperately, knowing the banded girl must be near, wanting to apologize again for the wrongs she had committed. She rose from the water, catching sight of a family of plump river otters, and spent a moment watching their silly antics before putting all her efforts to find her lamb. One of the otters in particular met her cerulean gaze directly and seemed to be trying to communicate something — but Seelie couldn’t commune with her. “Moorhen?” she whispered, half hoping the girl could hear her and half convinced that she would never listen to her Shadow again.

“Prrromise,” she sounded out with painstaking care. “Stay on island, on sandbar — take you far.” She could make that promise, couldn’t she? She could be faithful to that — to stay on the island or, at the very least, the sandbar, and take Moorhen with her whenever she planned to visit the mainland. That seemed fair and reasonable — everything she hadn’t been. “Lamb, I am sorry.”

Moorhen was right there, watching the Shadow with a look of clear suspicion on her face. She didn't know why her caretaker had left - only that the scent surrounding her often caused such things. It had with Venninne and with Laurel, and it had caused her to leave as well. But Moorhen had not returned to the Valley, and she'd worried that Coelacanth would not return to the Island, either. Stockholm had assured her that this was not the case, but she still worried.

"Here I am," she said, rremoving herself from the forest and advancing several steps toward her shepherd. She stopped a few yards away, her body language still stiff and unhappy. "We were worry," she repeated sullenly, turning her head away in stubborn anger.

“I know,” Coelacanth whispered meekly, her tufted ears folding guiltily as she dropped her carriage and inched forward on her belly. “Bad dog,” she breathed, wondering if this had been the last straw for her lamb. “Am sorry.” Her fox-fine muzzle dipped low and her tail beat a frenetic tattoo against her crouching hocks as she continued moving closer, Neptune eyes luminous and limpid with hangdog apology. She didn’t have the vocabulary or the wherewithal to make excuses for herself — “I thought I was sick! I thought something bad had happened to Catori!” — so she swallowed her frustration and her hurt and focused all of her effort into making amends.

“Stay island, sandbar,” she whisper-whined plaintively, “prrromise. Moorhen come — ” she forced her dumb tongue to shape the words as quickly as she dared “ — for all far.”

Moorhen was a seashell again, and Seelie her starved-for-love guardian. Please love me still, bespoke the desperate longing in her eyes as she tried to break through the distance and the anger. “Doe gone,” she offered on the wings of a timorous sigh, “Moorhen’s Shadow. Only Moorhen’s.” Isengrim and Julep had denounced the Groenendael; she couldn’t bear Moorhen doing the same.

Moorhen maintained her angry stance for another few moments before letting it all fall to the side. She crowded close to the Shadow and tucked herself underneath, ears drooping and tail wiggling in half-hearted submission. She was sorry, too - being angry at her Shadow did nothing to fix the situation, but neither did keeping her on the island. Everyone needed to wander from time to time.

"Just tell," she begged, peppering Coelacanth's chin in kisses. "Don't hide. Don't secrets."

Coelacanth fawned over her lamb, doing her best to stand as tall as possible in the name of sheltering the banded girl. The concept of secrets was an intimately difficult one for the inkdark empath. She had so very many of them, owing to her largely nonverbal state, and while some of these secrets were innocuous — the songs she’d never be able to sing, the stories she’d never be able to tell, the poetry of her heart that could find no purchase in syllables and syntax — many of them were rooted in shame. She considered every wolf she’d loved and lost a deep personal failure, and despite the time that ticked inexorably by, she thought of them often. She had tried to let them go when she’d first washed up on the Strand in a bedraggled heap, and by the time the Hunter’s Moon had rolled around and she was reunited with so many members of her family, things had gotten better; but they still haunted her — vicious memories, nipping at her heels.

In the wake of what had happened with Komodo and Aditya, these memories seemed particularly bloodthirsty. Snuffling fondly, she nibbled at whatever part of the girl she could reach — nape, ears, cheek. She didn’t know how to phrase what had happened in the Labyrinth and she had such a guilty conscience that she couldn’t see the Angakkuq’s unwarranted advances for what they truly were. As for Aditya, the wounds were simply too fresh for even attempted discussion. She hoarded them obsessively within herself, constantly analyzing and reanalyzing their conversation in her mind’s eye to see what she could have done differently to achieve a happier result.

“Thank you, Moorhen,” she breathed to her lamb at last. “Strong wolf, brave wolf — good girl.” She nosed lovingly at the base of the girl’s ear. “Stockholm come home soon,” she promised, fiercely believing in it despite the countless times she’d been wrong about these things.

The Volkodav was different. Stockholm would come home.