Dragoncrest Cliffs Steer clear of the sun

Tags for reference :)

The whale that had been washed up on their shores was little left but food for carrion-eaters by now. The skeleton was exposed, though partially buried under the sand which shifted around it when the tides came in and left. If no major storms came, the skeleton might remain there, mostly intact, baleen and bones bleaching in the sunlight. 

Suzu had come to claim two of its smaller ribs for herself. Her paw now healed, she felt well enough that she could successfully pry out a couple of the tall, arching bones which she intended to use as a part of a collection. While she was young, and she still benefitted from sharing a den with her family, she had plans already to begin digging out her own place to live once the ground thawed. Until then, she could gather her treasures, and keep them stowed away so that she could make her planned living-space an amazing one to behold. 

Her need to begin collecting things for her future densite was spurred on by the departure of @Quennell and @Swordfish, who'd left to go hunting goats in the mountains...Without her. She hadn't asked for an invite, and she might not have been given permission even if she'd been included on the plans. She'd tried not to look left out when the news had come to her, but she'd felt it. And she'd decided that in order to cheer herself up, she needed to do a little something for herself. 

She'd collect treasures that would make other wolves jealous. She'd pick herself a site for her future den, so that she could be envied. She wanted for others to see her worth. So she set upon the whale, circling it a few times before she picked out the ribs she felt she wanted. All she had to do now was pull them from the little bit of remaining connective tissue...But it was a game of tug-o-war that was tough to win. 

The ribs were thick, but she could get a good grip on them if she grabbed them near the end. The real problem was that the sand beneath her feet shifted every time she pulled away at the ribs. With each tug, her feet sank into the sand. The corpse was jostled only slightly, but she could tell she was making progress. It would take her time to accomplish, but she was dead set on achieving her goal.

Like Suzu, Stingray was stung (lol) by the lack of invitation to join his brother and Quennell on their grand adventure. It wasn't like he was close with Quen, but he would have expected an invite from Fish. Like Suzu, he was driven to seek the great reeking whale carcass as a distraction from his sadness, but his goal as he loped along the beach was not to be productive. Instead, he felt saliva pooling in his mouth the closer he drew to the remains.

Stingray could not be as portly as he was without some tendency to eat his feelings.

Before he could dive into the rotting mess to find some blubber to chew on, the whole skeletal wreck gave a little shudder that made him screech to a halt. There was no way the surf had done that. With bones and what stinking flesh was left blocking his sightline, he failed to notice Suzu tugging on the other side. Which meant the whale had somehow moved of its own accord, hadn't it?

OI! he shouted at it with a coat that bristled just a little. He wasn't frightened! That wasn't a little quaver in his voice, honest! You don't scare me, whale ghost! You're already dead, so get outta here! This is our body now! To snack on. To forget not being invited along.

YES <3

OI!

Suzu nearly jumped out of her skin when someone's voice rose sharply above the soft grinding of bone against bone. She let go of the rib, and it flew back into the air alongside the other ribs, wobbling to and fro for a moment. She stepped into the whale's mostly hollowed-out bowels, slicking her ears back so she could peer through a gap in the tissue and see Stingray just as he yelled at the whale again. There wasn't a teasing edge to his voice, and there should have been- if he was truly unafraid. 

She was quiet for a moment, thinking. The corpse remained still as though processing his threat. 

"BUHHHHHHHHWEEEEEEEEEEEEEErrrrREEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR!" 

She pitched her shoulder against the ribcage, thudding her weight against it over and over again to make the whole thing shudder, emulating a whale call as best as she could, despite having very limited experience in actually hearing them. Given the fact that she'd put on a considerable amount of weight from the blubber, she was able to make the ribs move in rippling, wave-like motions as she chucked her body-weight against them.

See? The carcass was still now, completely unresponsive to his shouted warning, as though the whale ghost heard and departed. Ray chuckled lightly to himself and began to approach with a gently swaying tail, ready to taste that sweet sweet

HOLY

FUCKING

SHIT!

There was no telling what did it, the sudden shaking of the carcass or the loud and eerie sound it made, but Stingray jumped at least four feet in the air with every individual hair on end. His fight or flight response hit him so fast and hard that Ray would later claim his entire soul left his body, along with every notion of bravery he had ever had about himself.

Yet despite fear raging through him with the force of a freight train, urging him to run away, he couldn't seem to move a single muscle in his legs, tear his white-lined and rolling eyes away from the shuddering corpse, or coax any sound from his gaping muzzle besides a keening, shrieking whine of terror.

He was going to die. He was going to die! The whale ghost was going to kill him for taunting it!

And there was nothing Ray could do about it but stare and scream while on the verge of wetting himself.

The sound he made wasn't heard, over the creaking and crackling of bones, and the sound of squelching as she stepped on whatever was left of the whale's innards. She continued to make lower, rumbling noises as she shoved against the tall rack of ribs with her shoulder, though she quickly found herself out of breath. She stole a second to peek through a hole between a couple ribs to see just how horrified Stingray looked. 

That didn't bother her. 

She picked up a chunk of sand-covered blubber and tossed her head back with a yowl, sending the chunk of meat flying over the whale's ribs, hopefully in Stingray's direction. She didn't bother to look and check to recalibrate before she picked up another chunk and whipped it up into the air, and then another. With as low of a voice as she could manage, she growled. 

"RRRRRRRR!!!!! EAT MEEEEE!" 

Before she fell to the squelchy, blubbery ground beneath her feet and nearly pissed herself laughing.

The whale didn't move an inch, but the rattling bones gave the impression of momentum and Ray's imagination filled in the rest. It loomed over him, the bared ribs resembling a great cage that might lurch forth at any moment to clap him in cartilaginous chains for the rest of his young life.

Ray quailed and cowered with flattened ears when the whale bones boomed another command, followed by the wet slap of blubber against the side of his face. A thin stream of urine began to trickle through the pale gold fur of his leg and into the sand below.

With his tail pressed as hard against his belly as he could manage, Stingray squeaked out a tiny, please! This wasn't just his punishment for taunting the whale ghost. This was his punishment for gorging himself on it every chance he got since Mercy left. His punishment for coming again with the same intent now that Swordfish was having an adventure without him.

Now that he had found his voice, terrified and cracking though it was, Ray couldn't seem to stop, rendering him unable for now to hear Suzu's laughter over his own pleas. P-please let me go! I'll never eat another whale again! I'll never even look at another whale! Ever! As long as I live! I swear it on my life and on my mom's life and my dad's life!

Her laughter would continue for a moment or two, until her ribs ached so much that she could giggle no longer. Tears were squeezed out of the corners of her eyes, which she wiped away between staggered gasps for air. Her cheeks stung from smiling. It was about this time that she heard his voice, fearful still, and caught a bit of his plea. 

Something about promising never to eat whale for the rest of his life, and swearing on his parents' name. 

Well this was odd. He genuinely sounded frightened. Suzu stood up and shook some of the moldy whale bits from her pelt before she padded around the curve of its skull to see him, cowering. She huffed. Fear was unbecoming. She sat, and tilted her head to the side. She leaned her shoulder against the whale's lower jaw. In silence, she appraised him before she spoke. 

"Stingray, I t'ink you been eatin' too much blubber."

Last from me. <3

Well, she wasn't wrong.

Suzu? he asked, blinking out of his cower when he realized the whale was no longer moving and Chacal's daughter was standing alongside its enormous head. The pieces were slow to slide together in his brain, but they did just that. At length, his fear turned to anger.

Suzu! he yelled, trying to unglue his tail from his underbelly to raise it in righteous fury, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. If he did, she would see the wet trail down his leg, if she hadn't already noticed the dampened sand beneath his feet. That's a mean thing to do!

What did Swordfish see in her, anyway? She was a bully, or at least she was being one right now, pranking him to the point of pissing himself. It was tempting to throw the comment back in her face by remarking on how gross and fat she had become, but he wasn't much better and he was too embarrassed to put much heart into insulting her. Besides, it just wasn't really him.

Instead, he turned tail and marched away with his jaws clamped tight to stem the prickling of humiliated tears in his eyes. He never returned to the whale again.

She chuckled still for a moment longer. "Oh Stingray, I did not mean to frighten you, I just-" She chuckled, but Stingray had no scope for this as humour. He turned and stomped away, and Suzu watched him go. She huffed, and rolled her eyes. That kid was too serious to take a joke. She went back to the carcass, and continued pulling the ribs free, one after the other, and began dragging up the beach, where she might create a shelter from them.