Wheeling Gull Isle renege

Takes place at Undersea's brand new Wood Pile.

After watching various sea wolves dragging driftwood and other litter out to sea, Moorhen had become rather protective of her magnificent pile of wood. She was lying on top of it, now, draped rather precariously across several large branches that had creaked briefly in protest before deigning to hold her weight.

Between her jaws was a soggy thigh bone that had washed up upon the beach, still flavored with blood and marrow once she'd gotten through the sand and sea salt coating. She worried at it anxiously with her yellowed fangs, eyes scanning the area every few seconds in search of something else to hold her interest.

He slunk along the sand with his head level with his shoulders, tongue lolling out of his black-tipped snout as he obnoxiously gulped air. Titmouse, like the rest of Undersea, had been working hard to clear the mess that plagued the isle following the storm. Bits of debris had gotten tangled in his belly fur but he didn't pay any attention to it, and his paws were lined with salt and sand.

As he crunched his way along he spied a pile of wood that nobody had started on yet. Initially he thought he saw something atop the pile move, but turned his dark-side towards the pile as he looked along the beach, investigating how many bodies were otherwise occupied. When he noticed that everyone was busy with their own business, he turned back to the pile and slowly intercepted where it sat.

There was still movement overhead, but the pile was massive and he wasn't as attentive as he should've been; Titmouse assumed it was just the wind playing with a haphazardly placed beam, or something. So he approached and looked for a spot to start tugging, and set his teeth in to a shard of arbutus that curved smoothly out of the middle of the pile.

Moorhen recognized Mou from his last stint in Undersea. He was one of the ones that had Left, so Moorhen already thought very little of him. When she spied him removing wood from the island with Lucas, her opinion of him had plummeted further, and now? As he came forward and began disassembling her master work?

Moorhen let out a volley of violent, berating barks, swarming down the pile to meet the other wolf head on. Yet, he was one of her own, and one of Coelacanth's chosen wards, so she kindly refrained from making a lunge for him. Instead, she tried to insert herself between boy and wood pile, her whole spine a mess of bristling fur, eyes glinting bloodily in the sunlight and nose wrinkled in deep distaste.

Mou no, she rumbled, holding herself stiffly. Mine.

In the rush, she'd lost track of her bone, having dropped it somewhere atop her pile.

The wood creaked, and the pile moaned, but he didn't get very far with his tugging before something happened. It was almost like he'd caused an avalanche of branches — and with a breathy yelp he released the piece of arbutus. It hadn't been a shifting of the pile that spooked him. When he finally could fix his good eye on the figure, he noticed it was Moorhen and she was snapping at him, throwing herself at him and warning him away from the pile.

He bristled (more out of necessity than aggression) and his tail went straight up, the tip twitching. He side-stepped to try and get around her and aimed to grab at another segment of wood sticking out of the pile but, adjusting quickly to her odd defense of the mess, duked the other way and tugged at a third spot. Why a wolf would collect sticks and stuff like this was beyond Titmouse — he didn't realize their appeal, and wanted to get to work clearing them away before the rains returned and weighed them down with more rain.

Hey! she snarled, twisting this way and that to try and block his advancement toward the pile. The wolf was thriftier than her, however, and slipped past to make another grab for her pile. No! she snapped again, more firmly this time, and launched herself at Mou to try and force him bodily away.

Although the clash of their bodies was harsh, Moorhen's jaws were harmless as they made grabs for his scruff, his legs, his ears - whatever was in reach. Mine, she stressed, her voice sulky. Made it. My wood.

She'd worked for hours on this, and now Mou thought he could just dismantle it like a dumb younger brother turning the hose on a masterful box fort? Hell to the no! Moorhen wasn't going to let that happen, and certainly not without putting up a fight.

The more she protested the more riled he got. Mou would have probably backed down but he wasn't Mou anymore, or not just the passive boy. Moorhen called out and pushed at him with her body and his reactions became sharper, more frenzied, but less and less about dismantling the pile and more playful. He shimmied around her, lifted up to grab at pieces out of her reach, adjusted when she assailed him, but didn't quit. When he grew too winded from all the hurried activity he eventually lagged and let her dissuade him, giving up, and he stood watching her happily. The pile still stood, not missing any pieces.

Although her actions never quite became playful, she certainly wasn't fighting seriously with the male. If anything, her actions became flirtier - but a flirty Moorhen is really just a bitier version of regular Moorhen. Too, flirty was not a mood she knew how to handle, and the newness of it only served to make her feel more off-kilter and wary, such that, when she and Mou broke apart, Moorhen only unleashed a mighty growl and shifted restlessly, uncertainly from paw to paw.

It wasn't that she wanted him to keep despoiling her wood pile. It was just that she wanted to keep biting him, and there was no call for that when he was behaving himself. Thus, Moorhen could only watch him with growing frustration, not quite sure what to think of the newly returned male. Her ears fanned back and then pressed forward again, eyes narrowing as she tried to pin down what she was feeling inside.

Right as she let down her guard (not really relaxing but close enough), Titmouse gulped a deep breath like he was about to dive through a cloud of noxious farts and appeared to start the game up again. This time he faked going for the pile and turned towards the discarded bone, which he scooped up in his teeth and playfully brandished as a new trophy. His body language was saying 'come get it!' But there was an edge to his posture, a lifting of his chin and an unintentional swagger, like he was trying to impress her. Titmouse had never courted anyone before and didnt know why he naturally fell in to such behaviors - something in the air had prompted this, or maybe he just liked the attention she was giving him.

Taking the feint at face value, Moorhen turned her body, ready to defend the honor of her One True Love - Señor Wood Pile. But Mou rushed instead for another prize - one that Moorhen was just as possessive over, even if she did not fear quite so much for the bone's safety.

Give, she barked, her own posture firming as she took a threatening step toward the male. Her gaze tracked the bone more than the set of his spine, but her ears - swiveling back and cupping forward attentively - betrayed her confusion over her body language.

Fed up with feeling weird and confused, the Akhlut decided to solve them with more violence. Without warning - and whether or not Mou deigned to follow his Akhlut's orders, Moorhen lunged for the other wolf in an attempt to tackle him to the ground.

He made a mad dash for the bone but she seemed to anticipate this, and followed without missing a beat. He was bigger by a small margin but it was enough, so Titmouse grabbed the bone and tried to swing his hips at her approach and deflect her, which she deftly avoided. She grew more aggressive and her commanding voice made him laugh soundlessly, though not derisively, and he tossed the bone away just as she intercepted him. Titmouse couldn't help the happy note that rumbled from his chest as Moorhen collided with him; he huffed some airy laughter and swept his tail high behind him, even as he lost balance. If she went for the discarded bone as it skid across the sand towards the pile, he would be hot on her heels.

There was a whirl of motion and sound as the pair clashed, Moorhen grrizzling both to herself and against Mou while the male huffed out a laugh that only further incensed the banded woman, even despite the innocent sound of it. She couldn't believe that he was enjoying being berated like this, and it made her vision turn as red as her eyes for one agonizing moment.

The bone skittered away from them, but Moorhen remained with Mou, delivering several swift and bruising nips to his person as she tried to assert herself, her posture board-straight as she stood between him and the bone, angry snarls ripping from her throat.

Her sounds became less and less playful, and yet he didn't clue in that he'd really bothered her. It was all a game, all for fun - was she really going to take it that seriously? But there was a seriousness there, a tension that Titmouse had experienced before (to a greater extent with some people) and he found himself drawn to her more than the bone in the sand, urged by a deeply rooted directive that told him to ignore the toy and focus on the playmate; he was an adult now, he shouldn't have been playing around at all!

She nipped at him, harassed him, rumbled sounds that would've normally caused him to back down or maybe even start a brawl, but that wasn't happening here. The more attention she gave him the more Titmouse wanted to return it, and he began to focus keenly upon her mottled coat rather than the bleached bone near the pile of precious sticks. He snapped at her, probed at her with his nose with small glancing buffs, eventually turning the game in to some kind of dance upon the sand — all the while murmuring in that breathy way he couldn't help, a mixture of thin laughter and something more bestial.

Now that the bone was away from them both and her inanimate husband was not being threatened, the banded woman was able to calm down. Somewhat. Mou was not submitting to her, which had become her main goal, but neither was he actively defying her.

She was still huffy, though, fending off his playful advances with growing impatience. She didn't quite understand how to play - for she had not sharpened her skills beyond a few short practices with her sister wives, and once a round of playful chasing with Xan and Venninne. She understood, on some level, that this was a game, but her inexperience caused her to feel as though it was a joke she wasn't in on - one that was, possibly, being made at her expense.

Eventually, she pulled back from the dance, trying to disengage before her temper got the better of her. A warning growl with a note of finality commanded the other to stop - or else face the consequences of her wrath.

He didn't want to stop. Playing wasn't something Titmouse actively engaged in very often, and he certainly had not expected the game to last this long with Moorhen, but he was relishing the attention. She snarled and signaled a denoument to their brief flurry of activity, and he was left huffing and puffing while she turned away.

Titmouse's mouth gaped wide in what would have been a sharp whine if he had the ability, but looked more like a petulant yawn - and he glanced away, looking up the beach at all the bodies still working hard. He wasn't quite ready to let the game go, so he made a sudden mad dash at the other side of the pile -- bypassing it entirely though, watching for Moorhen to get defensive, and popped around the other side with a play bow and a big smile directed her way.

Moorhen also did not play very often. When she did, it was games with the guppies that she was able to lord over. Playing with an age mate was a relatively novel experience, and not one she was sure she liked. At any rate, it had left her mentally and emotionally exhausted - enough that she could only watch sourly as he made another bid for her wood pile. She made to follow half a step behind, but when he popped out on the other side, she merely took ownership over her bone once more and sank down to her haunches to guard it, watching Mou with a gimlet stare.

There was just no winning with him. Not without using real violence, and Moorhen was not an impetuous youth any more. She wouldn't attack a pack mate just because they were touching her things and making her feel small - not one that had ingratiated himself to Coelacanth, at least.

She moved to plant herself atop the bone, so that... Sort of put a stop to everything. The look on her face made him a little nervous. The tense atmosphere had melted away and it seemed more like the air had gone stale, because certainly the playfulness had come to a halt. He would've invited her more vocally if he could, but just the look on her face made him hold back. His bow turned in to a sphinx-pose, and then he drew back and coasted slowly around the pile of sticks.

Titmouse poked his nose around the monument-sized pile but didn't attempt anything else, and when it became clear she wasn't about to move (and was not going to play any further) he looked around for the nearest toiling body and ducked away from her. If she wasn't going to be any fun, then it was back to work. Maybe once he got going with the beach-cleaning he'd find something good to bring back and add to the pile. Either way, he was drifting off and leaving her to her own devices.

Moorhen watched, relieved and disappointed all at once as the male departed, leaving her bone, her wood pile, and herself in peace once more. She gnawed possessively at the bone a moment longer, waiting until Mou was out of sight before standing, stooping, and then wiggling through a narrow opening in the pile to small den dug underneath. She buried the bone there in the sand and covered it with a few boughs stolen from below a towering spruce before heading off to go and help with the clean-up once more. She went the opposite direction Mou had gone, however, and kept close to her wood pile lest it come under attack once more.