Dragoncrest Cliffs and be yourself my ally in love’s battle

the harlot watched in pleasure as three wolves assembled upon the beach. selfishly she was thankful that none of the participants were her children. they would have the advantage of being born to the sea, the instinct for the win.
but valravn would surely have faltered, given the barb of his gaze when she had described the seafoam run. he had never grown into it. as she clutched the rock with hardened toes and watched the shoreline, the obsidian decided that she would take her boy out into warmer waters when the spring came so that she could teach him not to be afraid. he would be older then and perhaps more reluctant, but erzulie would prevail upon him. raleska and dacio adding their seablood to his until there was too much of it, and his mother's stubbornness baked into the sweet little existence of valravn. 
chacal, willowbark and disdain; erzulie had of course noted this before she stepped away to swim. but this was the way of things; rosada took firm. quite easily could the chai-spiced woman wish and envision an unbroken line of daughters to hold the leadership, and knew rosalyn would see such as a warranted preservation of how familial they had grown.
their silent jackal-girl was not voiceless, not at all — each nuance of body-note had become enhanced, and the aura around her cultivated with her slow control. the air had tightened somehow, attuned as they were, and at the will of the gold-blessed youth. 
but erzulie had lost her first brood early to their wandering. their ever-changing den emptying quickly of half-grown wolves who surely became great things beyond her eyes. her heart had a scar upon it. and she had lost valravn. a brutal time, an empty voice. and now regin had disappeared, dispelled abruptly into nothing. erzulie refused to undergo the loss again. her son and her daughter would swim against the currents in the months to come. and for it they would be rewarded. 
but today erzulie remained silently, wholly glad that neither was in the water today. 
her wife's voice rang. erzulie readied herself, noting the confident way njord had come into the sea. skilled lunges of his limbs carried the young swimmer forward, and she found herself smiling against the saltwater spray as he neared, hindclaws finding the stone for purchase, off again.
vex started with no less strength, though the harlot found herself watching tensely as he began to flounder. he had not been here long enough; the young gem did not yet have experience with the sea, erzulie believed, let alone one bound under winter. the waves were unforgiving to vex, battering him back toward shore.
she found herself questioning not for the first time her wisdom in calling the seafoam run. and yet it had satisfied some instinct in her, a determination to see all their crew immersed in the worst climes, so that they would know how to weather it. an unspoken code within sapphique that to be one of them was to become part of the brine by which they lived and died.
merlin. she had half-suspected that he might choose not to swim this day, which she would have accepted. but he had not. he was unsure, in the lines of his body, but held back only a breath before joining njord and vex within the dark icewater.
he too was caught by the will of the sea. mint-gold gaze watched intently as merlin began to turn back toward shore. a flick of her eyes upward brought the figures of the red-tail and the mountain-boy, successfully returned. but when she looked back upon the surface, merlin had gone from view. 
a breath, sucked through teeth; erzulie leapt from her perch at once, clawing though the snow-wrought depths until she came to the last place she had seen his ears.
another breath; erzulie descended.
her own auds ached at once with the coldness, but she had no time to think of the dull pain that would remind her she must return to the surface. erzulie cast a watery gaze about in search of any shadows that might mark his form, propelling swiftly downward as paws reached and muzzle searched half-open to grab merlin
if successful, she would drag him at once to the surface, steadying him against her shoulders once there.