Totoka River Falstaff sings a sorrowful refrain

wc: 444
@Lucas 

Mile after mile ,
On the chick-chick chick-chick sound of the matches 
On the memory of her smile.

I kept them dry 
And as long as there were five, I'd be fine...
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When Thresher woke up, it was later in the afternoon than she’d expected, and she was quite bewildered. What time was it, and where was she? She looked out along the shore where the waves had washed up all kinds of damp driftwood and sea kelp, had pushed rocks aside and flung things all over the place. She didn’t recognize the area...Or know which was she was meant to go. With the flotsam everywhere, it looked like a warzone, and it was all so unfamiliar. Vaguely, though, she felt at home alongside the ocean, but where exactly she was meant to be, she wasn’t sure. It was as tough she’d begun moving along some secret path, one that no one knew- not even her.

Her head ached, as did her side and her fur was still quite sticky with salt. She stood up shakily, testing out her legs but they were all in good condition. Not far away she could see where a river led down to the beach, forming a sort of estuary and she licked her salty lips; her mouth was parched and she was thirsty. She must have swallowed a great deal of sea water at some point, but the recollection of her harrowing experience had yet to return to her. Her thirst was much more important than putting together the clues...The salty water in her pelt, the strong taste of salt in her mouth, the aching of her ribs and head, where the blood had dried along the side of her face...None of that mattered, she was just thirsty.

She moved up the river past where it would be brine or brackish, to where the water was cooler and clear, fresh and free of salt. She roved into the water to wash away the thin layer of salt that made her skin itch, even though it was cold. She didn’t bother to leave the water until she’d had something to drink, though, and when she did, she shook her pelt- but the violent motion in conjunction with the massive amount of water she’d practically just inhaled made her stagger and vomit. She’d drank water too quickly, and now expelled it with great gusto, and staggered sideways ashamedly, licking her lips and grimacing. This wasn’t nice at all...And she was still very thirsty.

Rather than pull the same mistake again, she drank a little bit of water and tried to avoid drinking too much, too fast, before she pulled back from the river’s edge and began to groom herself, trying to get as much of the excess water off herself before she caught a chill. 

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And as long as there were four matches in a jar...

As Lucas made his way down the littered coastline, his wide paws squelched in the waterlogged sand and he stumbled multiple times over his own feet. Somehow it was easier to navigate the coastline when it was dry than when it was wet. Something about the sand kept tricking his eyes when he looked down at it, making him feel like he was sliding sideways even though he was walking in a straight line. Licking his lips now and again, Lucas kept telling himself he would only go a little further. Just a little further and he would find someone new to recruit for Govinda. Just a little further and he might see Reigi again. Just a bit more and maybe he would even find his family.

But his family was very far inland, so far that the wildest wind the ocean could conjure couldn't sweep the salt smell far enough to reach them. Reigi was at Undersea, and he couldn't remember how far away that was. And he seemed to be completely alone on the beach with its seaweed and its driftwood... no recruiting potential there. At least, he was alone until he reached the river.

It was the sound of retching that first made Lucas slow down and cock his ears, followed by the familiar tinkle of running water. With a gentle frown, he began heading for the trees and spotted Thresher just before reaching them. She was hunched by the water, grooming her bright blonde fur. She was smaller than him, much smaller given his immensity, but not so small that he suspected she was younger. He was admittedly a terrible judge of age. Thresher could have been the same age as him or maybe even older for all he knew. She sort of resembled Piper when last he'd seen his sister, though not the fur colour. If Piper was a wildfire in December's snow, then Thresher was the July sun outshining a dark rain cloud.

"Are you okay?" he called out, politely stopping just near the water's edge without drawing too close to Thresher. He would've happily rushed right over and given her a wolf hug if that's what she'd wanted—he was just that kind of guy—but he didn't know her or what she might want, or what she was doing here all on her own, or if she needed help.

Thresher felt horrible- and she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt this miserable before. She hated the feeling of being sick, and startled visibly when she heard someone drawing closer, and regarded the stranger with wide, wild eyes. She was naturally shy, and felt even more self-conscious when she was faced with a young male who had to be around her age. She hadn’t met many others her age, aside from her siblings...So she was a bit overwhelmed. She backed up a bit and lowered her muzzle, peering up at him with a woeful gaze as he greeted her.

He seemed friendly, though, and it wasn’t hard to earn Thresher’s trust or admiration. She felt immediately grateful for his presence and allowed her feathery tail to wag. ”Lost.” She peeped, voice high and frightened as her big, brown eyes begged for him to help her somehow.

Pale blue eyes swept over Thresher's charcoal muzzle when she dropped it down before finding their mark in the honey brown of her gaze, which was equal measures cautious and sad. He dropped his ears to half mast and attempted to communicate safety with a flagging tail, which was met by a wag. For a moment Lucas thought that maybe she couldn't speak—maybe she was like Reigi and struggled with it, which was a concept he was beginning to understand more—but then she piped up with a single word and his tail faltered.

Oh. This was more than he'd bargained for. His heart hurt for her, for he knew what it felt like to be lost and alone. By now his troupe would have moved on and probably forgotten him entirely, and when he let himself think about it, Lucas felt rather like the expression on Thresher's face: miserable. And though this was a larger task than he thought he was capable of helping with, since the world was very large and he was only one young man with little knowledge of it, he quietly asked, where did you get lost from?

The young fellow seemed to empathize with her, which Thresher appreciated, nd he made her feel a bit more safe. She was still cold and felt miserable, and the disorientation she felt just added more misery on top of everything else. She clammed up considerably if he asked where she was from, so she flattened her ears in response and shook her head sombrely, doing her best to hold back the swirl of emotions that made their way into her chest as though the water within had had the plug pulled in the drain. She had bits and pieces of memories, but they were all too vague and clustered to have any meaning for her.

That settled it. Lucas was unable to help Thresher without knowing where she came from, and it felt a little wrong to take her to Govinda. She wasn't a recruit; she was just a lost kid on the beach. She had a family somewhere, just like him. If he was lost and alone he would rather be returned to his family than taken to a stranger. Still, he had no other ideas, so he dragged a paw idly through the sand and asked, well, is there somewhere you'd like to go? I don't know where you came from either but I can introduce you to some of my friends if you want!

If nothing else, maybe Govinda would know what to do with her. He couldn't very well just leave her here; Lucas didn't have it in him to abandon someone in need.

Just gonna wrap this up cause she’s old but we need a new one!!

Lucas was a sweet and gentle soul- and Thresher didn’t have much experience talking to boys her own age but he was so compassionate that she ended up feeling a bit better, despite the pain in her belly. He invited her to go with him, but she felt tied to the area somehow, so she shook her head apologetically. ”Can’t go. When lost, stay put.” She said, reciting what she had been told as a youngster.

That being said, she wanted time for her body and brain to recover, so she looked at him with large, pleading eyes. ”Need rest...Stay, please?” She asked, slinking to the ground. In the presence of the kind stranger, she took the time to nap, warmed by his kindness.