Sea Lion Shores close our eyes to the octopus ride

set the 28th

he wandered a little ways away from where rosalyn had stopped, intrigued by the wreckage of the shore. the wind whistled past his ears and the water came in large ripples onto the sand, lifting, falling, rushing, ebbing. . . it was a hypnotic pattern, and cam found himself watching the waves for a while, before his attention was drawn by something much more macabre.

bones: a lot of them. assembled in a shape that vaguely resembled a body, but not of a wolf, nor any other animal he'd seen. he wandered closer, noting the ivory caked slightly in wet sand. he sniffed at the curvature, the strange, ghostly thing; it smelled only of the sea. the scent of death—

—sharp, tangy, red, MUMMY—

—was nowhere to be found. just the sea.

cam shuddered at the memories the bones had dredged up and did a semi-circle around them, eyes scanning the beach for other such specimens. for if there was one, there must be more.

Wraen had camped out at the sentinels for few days, which gave her plenty of opportunity to scout along the Stavanger bay and Sea lion shores. There was a very vague memory that she had been here before as well, but it had happened such a long time ago that she was unable to pinpoint exact time frame.

It was good to be back though, especially, since her morning had started off with two stranded fish. They had been preserved well in the cold air and reasonably fresh, when she had dug them out of the tangle of sea-weeds and eaten them. She rummaged through the rest of the stuff that the waves had brought ashore and happened to look up just as two sea-lions were focusing on her from the water.

She barked at the duo cheerfully, but they quickly disappeared from her sight. However, a more interesting finding awaited her on the beach. Few feet away from her a young, dark-pelted wolf was standing. His smell that wind brought along felt vaguely familiar, and curious to find out, why so, she approached the stranger politely. "Hi," she greeted him, smiled and wagged her tail.

he was interrupted in his search by a new scent on the wind, followed by a greeting. cam turned to see a gray woman standing nearby, and his shoulders hunched slightly, nervously, even though she looked friendly enough. hullo, he responded, and padded toward her at a wary, ambling pace.

the boy nodded toward the bones, nostrils flaring as he took in the smell of them again. what's this? cam queried, ears cupping forward in intrigue. she was older—she must know, right?

even if she didn't, she could say anything at all about the artifact and he'd take it as truth. what else was a youth supposed to do?

The kid did not seem to be startled by Wraen's presence and neither did he express any awkwardness around her, which was very common with young people his age. When interacting with the youngest Firebirds now, Wraen had noticed the change in their attitude towards her. Especially with boys. Elfie, Bronco, Pox and Crow - they all had reached that stage in their lives, where they questioned everything with a deep-set frown on their faces and did not take any advice seriously, unless they themselves had learned the usefulness of it. 

Maybe it was because she had become such a set and obvious feature in their lives like furniture in the house. Unless it breaks (or in case of a fridge - it's empty of contents), no one has any interest or admiration for it. So, Wraen was glad to interact with a young person, who did not consider her as a mere worn-out, comfy sofa, and went to inspect the bones he had pointed at. Her muzzle traced the outline of the arched ribs, stopped to sniff more in detail, where the skull had been, and finally did some digging und unearthed a yellowed femur from the sand.

"I do not know, who the animal has been - probably, one of the sea-dwellers," she told the boy and then pushed the bone towards him. "But if you crack open the fat end of this one, you might get some marrow to eat."

she didn't answer, but dug instead, pulling a bone from the sand. one of the sea-dwellers, she said. then why is it on land? he asked, but she'd already pushed the thing his way. instructing him to. . .eugh. that didn't sound appealing at all.

cam gnawed cautiously on the larger end, teeth working through the ivory. finally, something gave, and he tasted something quite salty, quite meaty. not unlike fish, but different.

oh, he murmured, licking his chops after a moment of savoring the. . .the marrow. 's good. he rolled the bone back toward her, understanding from rosalyn the importance of sharing in these tough times, and cocked his head in query. who're you?

"All living beings, whether they call the sky or the water, die on earth," Wraen explained. "We all come from the earth and there we return at the end of the life," she added more to herself than to the kid, who had already lost the interest in the topic he had started and was working diligently on breaking the bone open. After the first "umm"s and "ah"s he paused and seemed to remember about her and, what she thought, a little reluctantly pushed the half-empty bone towards her.

"That's your kill to keep," she refused to take the gift, but said it kindly. This kid had a lot of likeness to ones that she was raising and teaching at home. While she would have said "no" to an adult, she felt generous to the children. They were the future. "I am Wraen from Firebirds. What is your name?" she asked in return.

truthfully, he was more interested in her answer than the bone, even if the insides were tasty. that didn't mean he understood it, though. or. . .or perhaps he did. like the little butterfly gone still, no longer to take wing. 

fish taken out of water died. he knew this. so the skeleton, he assumed, was a rather large fish returned to the earth to perish. 

strange. sad. . .a little. but fascinating all the same. 

wraen, from firebirds, cam repeated, staring quite seriously at her. he left the bone be, instead focusing on the conversation at hand. i'm cam, from elysium. well, he added, after a pause, not anymore. what's firebirds?

The name "Elysium" rang a bell, but Wraen could not pinpoint exactly, where had she heard it first or why did it feel very familiar and important to some degree. A rush of worry similar to, when we think that we have left the gas on in an apartment we have just left, overcame her and then she calmed. Wasn't it the pack Seabreeze had founded together with Olive. A year ago she had met her brother's former mate, settled their differences and she had received an invitation to visit her niece and nephew. And she had probably given a half-hearted "yes", but had never come to fulfil that promise. 

Now Elysium did not exist anymore, she wondered, what had happened to the pack that had begun with such high hopes and good prospects and where the two young relatives were now. There was a bit of shame as well, for she had not attempted to re-establish the relationship and that now it was too late to do so. She sighed, pushed all of these thoughts aside to dwell upon them some time later, and focused at the boy again. "Firebirds is a family pack and the name has a nice little history to it. The founder - Wildfire - along her siblings were called "firebirds" by their father, when they had been little. Either because they had quite a temperament to keep up with. Or maybe because they lived at the foot of a former volcano," she spun the tale.

"With your home gone now, do you have somewhere to stay?" she asked him. There weren't any adults around now, but that did not mean that the boy was parentless or homeless.

cam wondered about the nature of a 'firebird.' truthfully, he wasn't familiar with 'fire.' what was that like? he was well acquainted with birds, though, and knew of their flighty nature. that painted a picture for him, even if it wasn't quite the one wraen had intended. and then another unfamiliar concept—

what's a vol— but she was continuing to speak, now with a query for him. he shook his head and shrugged, looking a lot less troubled than he felt. dunno. not really. i'm traveling with a lady looking for her family. she said, er, 'rusalka'? he blinked at her, curious to see if the name would ring a bell with her.

after a beat of silence, he jumped back in with the questions he'd harbored before. can you tell me about fire? what's a volcano?

she seemed very wise. very knowledgeable. cam thought she had a wealth of information and hoped to milk the moment for all it was worth.

Fire was something you could not explain to a person, who had never seen it or felt it's burn on the skin. It was a fascinating force of nature, beautiful and deadly. Wraen's birth place - a forest of centuries old trees - had been destroying in a matter of days by a wildfire. She had not witnessed the act itself, but even years after the incident the place had not healed it's wounds. The blackened and charred stumps and remains of thick trunks scattered among the lush greenery were sad reminders of the tragedy that had taken place there. 

"Fire has to be seen to fully comprehend it," Wraen told the boy, carefully choosing the words. "It isn't substantial, it's not something you can touch and pick up. It is very, very hot - so much that it can turn living things in ashes. It does not matter, whether they are plants or animals, it takes everything," she elaborated. "You won't see one from autumn to early spring, but if the summer is very hot and dry, fires can sometimes start spontaneously."

"Volcanoes are mountains that can spit smoke and fire. Some believe that they are sleeping dragons. They have nasty tempers and bellies full of fire," she finished and chuckled at the chosen analogy.

hot. he knew hot, he thought—or, at least, he knew cold. and he knew hot was the opposite of that. cam tried to comprehend something he couldn't even touch, something that turned things into— ashes? he asked. another word beyond his knowledge.

and however fearsome fire seemed, volcanoes were even more terrifying. a sleeping. . .dragon, cam muttered, and he meant it as a question, but was too engrossed in this wild world of hot, destructive materials to phrase it as such.

wraen really did know a lot. he wondered if others knew all of this.

have you ever seen fire, or a volcano? he asked. cam thought that if he ever did, he'd run quite fast the opposite direction. no chances would be taken that day.

"Well, in this valley, I know only the one, which is called Redhawk caldera and is found down south from here," Wraen explained. She had seen the place few times herself, when she had lived in the area, but it had never struck her as any more dangerous than the mountain ranges on both sides of the location. It had never awoken or spat fire in her lifetime, but if the story was circulating of it doing so, then the memory had to have some foundation in truth. 

"That volcano is sleeping though. Haven't heard a single rumble or smelled sulfur, when I've been around," she added. "Fire - on the other hand - yes. Once. I was young and travelling with my parents and we happened to be near a place, where a fire was raging in a forest. It was far off, but I remember feeling the immense heat and the blazing reds and oranges. And how the wood crackled and hissed," she reminisced. The memory was so potent that she could remember it vividly even years after the incident. 

"There was also a lot of smoke and I remember feeling very sick as well," either because of the chemicals in the fumes or carbon monoxide. Wraen had no way of knowing. "It is an extraordinary sight, but terrible as well."

redhawk caldera. he would try to remember that. one day, he wanted to go and see it for himself—from a distance, of course. a very vast distance. but if wraen said it was 'sleeping,' that meant. . .it was dead? like mummy. it would never wake up again, and so it must be safe.

his eyes widened at her description of fire. sounds awful, cam remarked, not really sure of what to say or how to feel. awestruck, surely. no question there. wraen had been through so much, apparently, and seen everything there was to see.

where do firebirds live? he asked, wondering if it was close enough to visit, eventually. he was tiring of interaction and wanted to be left alone for a while to think all of this over, but he would like very much to hear more stories from the woman—and her friends, as well. they must know as much as she.

"In a nest of ashes and firewood," Wraen teased the boy kindly, when he asked about the whereabouts of Firebirds. It inspired her to come up with a more juicy and creative version of, how the pack had got it's name. They definitely needed a seer, who would foretell Wildfire's extraordinary life, and some mystical signs that had told that the copse would be the best place to live in.

"If you travel along this coast westwards," she beckoned in the direction, "and after passing a mountain range on your left, you turn left, then the first forest there will be my home." Wraen explained: "I wish there were any other more extraordinary details about the area. But the world is not that much of a large place. We might run into each other in the future." 

Most likely not, but the kid did not have to know that. "So - young fellow - it was nice talking to you, but I should be on my way now. Good luck with everything," she told him, waited a little to hear, if he had anything to say as well, then began to head back home.

Last one from me. Thank you!

cam's brow furrowed in confusion. but— he started, confused as to why they'd choose to live close to fire after all she'd said. . .but then wraen continued, correcting herself. he was not very good at jokes, nor did he have much faith in his remembering those directions.

but he would try.

okay, 'bye, cam murmured, a little sad to see her go so relatively soon. he was half-tempted to follow, though remembered rosalyn even before he took the first step. he couldn't just abandon his new caretaker, even to trail after a wolf he found so endlessly fascinating.

instead, he picked up the bone they had chewed upon and walked the other direction with it, gnawing thoughtfully as he thought of firebirds and volcanoes and everything so exotic and far removed from all he had ever known.