Ankyra Sound It's just that everything reminds me
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Ooc — Jitterwater
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#1
All Welcome 
The Strand; perhaps for someone he hasn't threaded with before?


You need rest, and then you can try again.
He's fine! Look, he's standing on his own now —

And he was, but they weren't looking so closely at him this time. They didn't need to, knowing that his butchered body had weakened in the past few days; he was fighting infection, fighting the damage from an unknown assailant, fighting for his own independence from their constant guard and care — Firefly saw a gleam in her eye as she finally turned to look at him, and then she cautioned, You can't fight everyone, Firefly.

The sharp voice of Willowstrife was echoing through his memory like a balm to his less physical wounds. His ego stung. It felt like he was repeating things. Finding something to combat, being torn to shreds, and not giving up. This time he didn't have Willow's knowledge or Nettle's companionship to get him through it. He had the sea — which billowed out from the pack's private beach, as if to avoid contact with the swarthy man as he drifted, brooding and frustrated, across it. Firefly found a narrow plateau of stone which likely would be submerged when the tide rolled in again, and here he placed himself, laying down and watching the crashing of the surf.
tell me what the rain knows
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:)

Tunerk had, in the beginning, avoided the foreign body of water that was the sea. It was loud and unsettling, and on certain days it sounded like thunder. But this was a significant part of the territory Rusalka lay claim to, and so the Northerner knew she would need to get to know it better. This day, she was not particularly driven to complete the task thoroughly. Still, it was a start.

She walked slowly across the sand, the stuff utterly different than the firm compact feeling of snow. Tunerk missed snow. I can like sand, she told herself, why not? It was just that she did not know it yet. And although she had told herself that, the feeling of it getting into the nooks and cranny of her paws was something Tunerk at present did not enjoy.

Lost in her thoughts as she was, she very nearly missed the figure that was slumped on a rock. Was he napping? Tunerk knew her brothers did not particularly enjoy being roused from their naps... but maybe he was awake, and maybe he would want to become her friend.
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#3
The man was lost in his memories for a few minutes more, and did not notice the approaching cloud that was Tunerk. Even if he had, she was not a familiar fixture upon the beach. Had she been present at the battle? Maybe. His mind flit to the chaos of combat, then. The blur of snarling faces. A gold-capped stranger with seabright eyes gunning straight for him.

A blunt golden shape dominating his view. Snarls becoming shrieks, screams, not canine — not anything natural — the reaching of too-big paws with sickled claws, there one moment and gone the next; blood, so much blood —

— he snapped out of the flashback as swiftly as it had come, but found himself standing tall upon the rocky segment with no memory of lurching to his feet; his mouth agape, gulping air as if he'd just been running laps. And there, settled in the sand, was the pale stranger. Firefly focused on them instead of — whatever the memory had morphed in to, whatever that had been — and cleared his throat, but he couldn't quite find his voice yet.
tell me what the rain knows
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#4
Tunerk watched him rise and observed his body language, reading nothing else from him but that. He looked—sounded—sickly for a moment, and Tunerk whimpered softly at the sight of him, but did not draw nearer. Had she earned that reaction from him? Thinking she ought to have, Tunerk apologetically lowered herself to the earth, ears wilting atop her crown as she looked abashedly away. The Northerner did not seek to inspire that reaction from anyone, and did not fully understand it but felt she must be to blame. Tunerk could not yet know that his mind was still on the battlefield although his body had left it. He cleared his throat, and Tunerk yawned submissively: no trouble here!
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#5
His heart thundered in his chest, and fur puffed as if something had come to disturb him greatly, which was accurate. He need not be so defensive — but Firefly wasn't himself initially, and it took a few moments before he settled. As he relaxed the thrumming of his heart did not ease much. He looked around, wild-eyed at first, before settling his gaze on the pale wolf nearby, who looked spooked in their own right. Probably his fault. The stress of the combat had brought some thoughts to light and it would take time for Firefly to make sense of them.

It's alright, he called out to them, his voice sharp and cold despite the uncertainty he felt inside. I was just... Hallucinating monsters or something, which he couldn't say. Uh, I think I was dreaming. More like a nightmare. Those huge paws and the sensation of claws dragging across his body's every plane, sinking in to his belly — and that otherwordly screaming — would not leave him so swiftly.