Wheeling Gull Isle but i was hedging my bets at vbs

open to any of the older sibs! also making a TON of assumptions, lmk if not okay

When Dinah thought of her birth-family, it was getting increasingly hard for her to decipher her slowly cementing opinions of them.
Mama. The pearl at the center of the clam, the figurehead, the lifegiver. She loved Mama, the fierceness of her gaze and the sweetness of her voice. But the older she grew, the more disconnected from her she felt. She wasn't quite sure why. A busy woman, she was, and Dinah felt as if she saw her less and less as the spring had melted into summer; and the youngest babes of Sweetharbor had been the nail in the coffin, sweeping her away and catching her in their spider web. In the little girl's head, she just saw it as Mama having no time for her anymore.
Perhaps this is why she clung so hard to Daddy, her mirror; she spent a good many of her days with him, even idly. But Daddy was worn as of late, a glassiness to his gaze that Dinah didn't quite understand, and try as she might, he wouldn't tell her what was wrong.
This brought her to @Simeon, her dear eldest brother, her rock. Of all eight pups, she often found herself drawn to him; the sweetness of seafoam when he looks to her, the strength and fondness within his hugs, the whisper-shouting in the middle of the night. She hadn't spoken to him much lately. She didn't know the reason for that, either.
@Judah; the soot-striped child stricken with fear, the one she felt responsible for when Simeon wasn't. She loved him just as much as anyone else; she held him during his nightmares, showered him with trinkets, listened to his talks of The Shadow Man when no one else would. They were polar opposites in many ways, and nonetheless it was embraced. She longed to bring him with her on her scavenger hunts one day.
But he was often peeled away by the long claws of @Malakai. They were twins — sure, yeah, whatever, they all were born on the same day, those two just happened to look alike! Malakai was the most confusing to her of anyone. His world revolved around Judah and Judah alone, and no one else could even touch Judah when he was around. When she thought about it, she could probably count on one paw the amount of times Malakai had even looked at her. He was cold, bossy; uncaring. She wanted to offer him her hand, to love and bond with him as much as she did everyone else — but some invisible wall had been put between them. She wished she understood why exactly she didn't trust him. It made her feel so evil! He was her brother, they all were — so why was his image so muddied in her mind?
The thoughts run around in circles inside her head as she sits at the edge of the denmouth, pushing a small rock between her forepaws. Left, right, left, right, left, right. Family is stupid. Feelings are stupid. She doesn't know anything, and she misses Gramma Towhee.

“Dinny!” He sings. She is here- what a rarity!

She looks sad, and he assumes it is because she is bored! Judah hates being bored too. Fortunately for him, that rarely happened, there was always so much going on inside of his head. In fact he has to spend a fair amount of time by himself to figure it all out! That was the only way to make sense of things these days. Now that his world has expanded there was quite a bit to know! And God helped him to figure it out.

He comes to flop in leggy pile in front of her, stretching out his black-tipped paws until they tickle her nose. “What are you playing? Can I too?” He snatches for her rock.

!!!!!

Her brooding is short-lived when dearest Judah appears, shuffling up beside her and making a reach for her rock. Hi Ju, she doesn't hesitate for long before she noses it over to him, a soft smile gracing her features. She knew it would make him happy; and her family being happy made her happy!
She was pleased to get time with him without Kai breathing down his neck, although instinctively, she looks over her shoulder in search of him should the other ash-coated twin rain on her parade. However, it wasn't for long — the coast is decidedly clear. She watches Judah with big round eyes, and her tender little heart soars.
That rock is kinda lame, she snorts, resting her head between her now empty forepaws. we could go get a better one. A smirk toys at her mouth, eyebrows raised; the real question was if he would accept and go with her.

“Ohhh,” He thinks a moment.

In truth, he thought the pebble was kinda pretty. Brownish, made of the same bed-rock of their den. But if Dinah thought it wasn’t good enough then he is quick to agree.

“Yes, lame.” He frowns and tosses the now ugly stone aside. His ears droop.

“But where?” He asks his sister with an attentive tilt of head.

Out there! She exclaims, eagerly pointing to the foothills outside the den with a raise of her snout. I know aaaaaall the best rock-finding spots. I'm the best forager, don't'cha know? the mischievous grin grows, snaking up to crinkle her eyes at the edges and bring roundness to her cheeks.
She considers it for a moment — was he still frightened by the outdoors? You don't gotta be scared, she says, then, voice lowered to a gentle tone. I'll protect you. Jus' follow my lead, yeah? she rises to a stand, nudging her brother's shoulder with the tip of a cold little nose and a happy beat of her tail.

She conducts him with an outstretched paw. She wants to leave the den, and he will come too! Won't she be so proud of how big he is?

“Yusss best fowajuh!” He bounds to little paws with energy anew as a tongue tip tests the strange word. Dinny found all the cool things! Rocks and plants and sticks with the proper thickness for chewin’!

“I not scared Dinny! Because I go with you,” He headbutts beneath her chin, tail wagging excitedly. Dinny new basically everything, he knew she wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

“Yus, I follow!” He stands to attention, suddenly serious now, but his tail still gave a rapid tick behind him.

He is not scared, and it's because of her.
Her heart swells. A beaming milkteeth smile so wide it flushes her dimpled cheeks, and a hearty, mischievous giggle flutters from deep in her chest.
She guides him shoulder-to-shoulder out into the sunbathed Isle, the rolling reed-laden foothills and the saltsea that awaits them just on the other side of them. What color rock do you want? she inquires, pace slowing, ears quirked. I wanna find a big white one with a li'l black stripe on it. Like you!
Her nose finds his cheek as she gives it a gentle, but excited bump. Look how far we are from the den! One paw outstretched, she gestures to the great big Isle in all its God-given glory. She didn't know if Judah had ever been this far out; but either way, she felt great pride! Thank God for His strength, the strength that now found Judah! You're doin' it!

He giggles! How was she going to find a Judah rock?! But she would! He knew it!

“Ohh colors,” he thinks as he idly trots beside his sister. “Ummmm.”

“Uhhh…” There are just so many colors. Especially outside. Sky-blue and lavender, sand-colored and orange like crabs. Yellow like sunshine, or teal like the ocean! And it could be any kind of color- rainbow even! Or sparkly like a seashell!

“Oh! I know know!” He hops against his sister’s side, eager for her immediate attention. “Gray!”

Gray? Gray! Okay!
That shouldn't be too hard to find! There were many gray rocks, and all kinds of shades, too! Silver, ash, pale, slate, soot, warm, cool — some gray rocks had patterns, others were smooth. She'd now made it her mission to find the best gray rock ever.
The shoreline is a long stretch of white sand and murky blue oceanwater, with waves that peel back and clap against your feet and make you feel like you're being swept away. Eagerly, she romps right up to the coast where the very edge of foam-flecked sea touches the earth.
Sometimes the ocean washes up cool things, like gray rocks, she invites Judah closer with a stretch of her paw outward. the water might tickle though. Stand close to me!

His head rattles cheerfully- gray! It is his favorite color! It made all the other colors shine brighter against it!

“Ok Dinny!” He slinks in close behind her down the way to the beach, trotting out from the black tangle of tree branches and into the bright shift of sunlight.

He doesn’t often go to the beach. It’s rather intimidating, the vast water frightens just as much as it mesmerizes. But he gets to explore for the first time with Dinah and he follows eagerly wherever she will lead him, filling each of her pawsteps in the sand with his own feet. He pauses here and there to consider each potential rock. By his eye, they are all pretty. He doesn't really understand what qualities make one more special than the others.

Dinah stares down at her feet as the first foam bubbles reach her ankles. The water is a shock of cold to her system, and she lets out a whoop of excitement. It's freezing!
When the tide pulls back again, she sees something — a little spiral seashell, ribbed and patterned with silver stripes against a dark gray body. Look! it wasn't a rock, but it was gray!
She leans down to nestle it between her teeth, just as another wave begins to descend upon them. She's too late to notice it; her eyes squeeze shut as her face is dunked in a bath of saltwater. She crouches beneath the pressure as the sand at her paws ripples and moves with the tide. It feels a bit like she's being sucked in with it!
But instead of being afraid, she is exhilarated, and a laugh billows from deep in her chest. Her head swivels to Judah, wild eyed. You okay?

He bucks and capers excitedly as they reach the shoreline, nosing into Dinah’s ear before tearing away to frolic. He dips one paw into the icy tide and his entire coat burrs up in response. A series of high pitched giggles tear through him at the strange sensation!

“Fweezing!” he chants, cantering away. But Dinah’s caught by something exposed by the rolling surf, a spiral shell she makes a move for.

“DINAH!” He cries as a wave rushes for her, watching on helplessly for a moment only to see the glee on her face.

“You could get huwt, Dinny!” He whines, coaxing his sister to come further from the waves, tail coiling up around his belly.

Judah has prevailed through the wrath of the sea, even as Dinah drips with a coating of briny water and flecks of white foam. Her eyes crinkle as she opens her mouth to present her gift; the little gray shell that which she saved from being swept away!
But then her glee melts into concern. He is concerned. I'm okay! Look! she whirls around in a little dance, kicking wet sand up behind her as she lopes toward him and careens into his side, the shell dropped safely where the tide cannot reach it. She didn't want to give him a heart attack; not today, not ever.
Her lip juts out as she lowers her head to examine it once more, turning her head to gauge his reaction. Do you like it? It's gray, but it's not a rock.

The pout is quick to melt away as Dinny dances and he can only watch on in awe, neck craning from his position well up the beach. He thinks in that moment there has never been a wolf braver than his sister.

“I wub it, Dinny!” He barks and throws his arms up over her shoulders, smushing his face into her damp golden coat, “I wub you.”

Still with one paw around her he shifts to nose at the strange shell, long and pointed on one end, wholly original than anything he’d ever seen before! That might have made it special, or unique, the very thing that Dinny was looking for. But to Judah it far more special because it had come from her.

A tongue pokes from his lips and with it he feels the little mineral ridges. For some reason that seemed like the right thing to do. He liked the sensation.

But there was a problem, because he still needed to find a rock for Dinah!

He likes it! Dinah is overjoyed, ears splayed outward as she stumbles with the force of his embrace. Her eyes flutter closed, and silently, she revels in the connection.
Her brother, her wonderful brother; in a time where so much else seemed fruitless, where the world slung curveballs at her and yapped at her to duck much too late for her to be able to; where the stability she once thought she knew wavered and changed with the tide and the color of leaves; through all the confusion and worry and anger and time whizzing by much too fast for her to keep up with, she still had him. And never would that change, she thinks, as her nose is buried in the briny scruff of his neck. I love you too, Juju.
But he pulls away all too soon, and she watches as he begins his own exploration of her latest treasure. When his tongue pokes out, she giggles, and when he stares with bright eyes blown wide, she stares back. You wanna find another one?

“Yes!” He peeps with a flap of tail- but how? He doesn’t want to go into the water, but that seemed to be where the rare rocks were. And after Dinah had found him one so unique, how could he not do the same? He snorts out a little determination. He wasn’t a wimp!

But now he had to prove it.

His paws stamp down in the foaming shoreline, his tail sticks straight out like a rudder. His jaws clench, his body stiffens, his eyes narrow, and in his mind the countdown starts. 3…2…1…

He soars! Over sharp rocks and snags and swirling waters and weird bubbling holes, atop of a smear of brightly colored gifts from the sea. A wave picks up, gathering the tide from below, gaining momentum and height and hovering precariously high overhead. With a shriek he opens his mouth and grabs at some roundish thing, pivoting in the last second only to be seized and chewed up by God’s ocean then spat out haplessly onto the sand. His gift was gone, reclaimed by the sea.

“GRAHHHHHHHHHH!”

Dinah was almost sure they both went through all seven stages of grief in a matter of moments. She watches, slack-jawed, as Judah so valiantly leaps right for the current — oh, how proud she was! — until she then notices the burling roar of water that stood as tall as his head. She hadn't the time to warn him.
Within seconds, she is at his side. Oh, shat! Towhee's influence is strong as she hurtles the expletive in an oh-so incorrect fashion, brushing her paws over his face and haplessly pressing her tongue to his muzzle to ensure he is breathing. Are you okay? Oh my gosh, dude!
She hadn't even noticed that his present for her had been lost.

“Yeah… I’m ok,” he assures gruffly, peeling himself off the shore and hawking up a jawful of sand.

“I like doing that actually. Um, It’s fun,” he tries to recover so Dinah won't see what a massive yellow-belly he is, but he can’t stop shame from seeping into his tone. He just wanted to be cool and brave and skilled like the rest of his siblings. He wanted Dinah to admire him the way he did her. But how is he supposed to do that when he isn’t good at anything?

He wanted her to have the best rock, with the biggest ridges and the swirliest swirls that she could show off to everybody and when she did and they heard it was Judah that had got it for her they’d all be so impressed and he’d be deemed the best, strongest, coolest brother on the whole island!

In truth, Dinah is just happy to see Judah has not been turned to mush by the current. Jude, she sweeps him into a big embrace, muzzle wedged into the space between his batty ears. She hears the coolness of his voice, the crestfallen turn. you don't gotta like it just because I do. I like getting you gifts. But the ocean can be scary too.
She pauses momentarily to blow sand particles from her nostrils. There's other stuff, like, um, her eyes dance up to the little black birds and big white gulls just a hair further up the beach, pecking at something on the ground. you could be a bird-hunter! Or, um, another glance, this time in the direction of the greenhills. you could be the big scary protector! Keep bad guys away from us.
But no matter what, Dinah would love him all the same, she thinks, and there is nothing that could take that from her. I still think you're cool.

She relieves him of gift giving duties… but how else can he show Dinah that he loves her?

He could catch her a bird… but they’re so high up in the sky.
He could protect her… but he’s hopelessly small.
He’s stumped.

But he’ll think of something. Brightening, he tilts his nose and grins back at her, tail yielding to a spritely wag.

“I think you’re the coolest. I mean, look at all the stuff you can do! All the adventures you go on! And the neat things you can find!” His tongue lolls as he imagines it! “What do you wanna be when you’re a grown up, Dinny?”

He thinks she's cool, and that very sentiment brings an array of giggles from her chest. I'm not that cool, her teeth poke from her lips in a jagged grin of mismatched teeth. I can think of a bajillion people cooler than me! Like Gramma Towhee! She's cool.
And so too was Judah; righteously devoted to God above, devout and honest in his love; facing new fears every day. He was not the shivering little boy she first knew him to be, but a proud, smiling young man who takes the ocean head on, and that was cooler than anything she could think of.
Hmmmmmmmmm, she hums, moving to idly brush more sand from the wire at his nape. I wanna study the world! The plants n' rocks, n' stuff. And the stars, she tilts her head upward to the swath of silver sky above. did you know there's patterns in 'em?! I see it at night when there's no clouds!
There were so many things she could choose to be, to specialize in; but born from God's Earth she was, and to know all of His creations would be her greatest honor. Maybe we could learn about the stars together!

“Yes. Ok, Dinny!” He gives a little dance. He would dutifully learn anything with her, if it’s what she wanted. This was helpful for him, too, since he didn’t know what truly drew his own interest.

“What do stars do?” He asks her, thinking Dinah must know. Judah understood only that they twinkled, and they looked an awful lot like little droplets of water in the night sky. But why had God put them there? And where did they hide during the day?

I'onno, Dinah mumbles. I think maybe they're little gifts from God. To help us see at night.
She parts from her brother's form for only a moment to pace further along the wet saltshore, flopping firmly at the hilt of the sand in a bow before coming into a full lay. They needed to dry off before they tracked muck up into the den again.
I wonder what God made the patterns in 'em for. Maybe to tell us things about ourselves! Like, if we see a certain one at a certain time, she reaches a briny paw outward in search of Judah, and for a fleeting moment, she considers staying like this forever. like secret messages.

“Secrets!”

His breathing grew labored though it was only in excitement as Judah enamored himself with the idea that there might be a way to communicate with Dinah in the stars in spite of any distance; any ocean that might be set between them!

His voice tumults with a stamp of paws as his nose shoots skyward, searching for the mystery in the stars.

“Will you show me the secret messages tonight, Dee?”

fading here <3333 i absolutely adored this thread

We'll learn 'em together!
Together. Forever and always.
Dinah flashes him a big, corny grin, shaking away the sand that coats her legs and belly. She wonders what the stars would say about their future, about where they'll be when they grow up. Who they'll be.
It seems so far away, so nonsensical, the idea of them parting ways to form families of their own. To only see each other on special occasions instead of waking up side by side every morning, to shed the skin of downy fur and toothless smiles, of high-pitched laughter and biting at ocean waves. Of Mama and Daddy growing old; of future children with each other's eyes.
Would the stars tell them good things?
We'll come back tonight.
And she would, she thought; she would stare at the curve of Judah's cheek, bluelit from the moon, and she hopes he will find love in the constellations.