Wheeling Gull Isle arirang

@Haoming sorry for the delay! And I'm gonna back date this a little to like a day or two before my post date.

Sae was comfortably settled into the pack, he was still a little shy of others. Wheeling Gull Isle was small—just big enough for a single pack to roam comfortably. Sae liked that about the island and he liked the pack. Neither of those were in question, but sometimes it felt hard to find a good place of solitude. Somewhere that others might not find him so easily. 

There were few hiding places here, aside from the dens, but Sae recalled the Gateway as being a place that might not have wolves frequenting it. It was, after all, a ceremonial place. One where marriages took place. He figured it might be far enough away and a strange enough place for a wolf to wander without reason. Granted, his reason was not for what the rock arch was intended for, but he found the solitude he craved there. Somewhere where he could sing without prying eyes—at least, he hoped.

The black wolf took one more look around before he opened his maw and began to sing. It was a song that his father had taught him. And although his father did not consider song a useful skill or talent, Sae often caught his father humming or singing this tune:

아리랑, 아리랑, 아라리요...
아리랑 고개로 넘어간다.
나를 버리고 가시는 님은
십리도 못가서 발병난다.

// you're totally fine!

As luck would have it - or bad luck, in Sae's case - there were certainly prying eyes in the vicinity. Not that Haoming minded much. She'd been traveling further and further from the den recently - all over the little island, in fact, and she was getting acquainted with the landscape. Not necessarily her packmates, as those still stressed her out from time to time. But she liked the traveling by herself. 

The rock arch was cool, she thought, but it was occupied today. Dark ears perked and her eyes - still puppy blue - took in the sight of the dark wolf there. He was big, darker than anyone she'd met before, and he was doing weird things with his voice in a language she didn't really understand. Some of it almost sounded like her own, but not quite. 

She paused, listening, and arched a brow. It was a nice sound, she decided. 

Patiently, the girl waited to the end of his music before she spoke. "N-nuh-nǐ zài... zài z-zuò shén... me?" she asked, voice stilted and unsteady. Her speech impediment was not improving, though her vocabulary certainly was.

He had no idea that the pup had crept up and invaded his solitude. His song continued, fading away into the wind and the waves, though a faint sound reverberated off the archway. It wasn’t strong and thus short-lived, quickly fading against the sound of the air and tide.

It wasn’t until his song was done that the pup announced her presence and it made the older wolf jump a little, startled. She had spoken, stumbling a little, in a tongue akin to his father’s tongue but foreign all the same. His head tilted to the side as he examined the pup, scenting the air around her. Intermingled with the pup’s scent of innocence was the scent of Huā and lavender, maybe from Daiyu.

Clearly, there was a language barrier between them. At least, if he tried to speak his father’s tongue, but perhaps if he tried in a more common tongue…

I’m sorry, little one. I don’t understand you. Do you understand me?

Ah, she scared him. That filled Haoming with a sense of pride, brief though it might have been. This wolf seemed okay, she figured. The sound he'd made was nice, and he wasn't not supposed to be here - he smelled like one of their wolves. So... maybe this was okay. 

Dark ears perked forward at the sound of common tongue, and she bobbed her head up and down. She didn't understand it as well as her mother's tongue, but she could get what he was trying to say anyway. "H... hye... yes," she responded, tilting her head to the side. "I unnerstan'." 

Boldly taking a few steps forward, Haoming looked up at the dark wolf, intrigued. "M-muh... make noise?" she asked, trying to ask what he'd been doing. "You... you, uh, wh-what... sounds?" Blue eyes fixed on brown, and her tail swayed a bit. Words were hard, especially in a different language to her first, but she was trying.

A gentle smile crossed the black wolf's lips. So the language barrier wasn't so severe; she understood him when he spoke in the common tongue. And he was able to understand her, though her ability was somewhat crude. But she was like him, with her mother likely speaking in her family tongue rather than the common language spoken outside the den.

The pup's stutter, however, persisted.

When the child asked him to sing again, he tittered a little. He was happy she rephrased her request to a question. It's called singing, he explained. And to do it, you just put words to a tune.

@Haoming