Dragoncrest Cliffs make them crawl

backdated to the morning after sobeille found the sulukuppies! <3 all tagged are welcome to pop in a single reply! pp with permission. all of sapphique is welcome to reference this!! <3 

while lucette watched sapphique's newest daughters, sobeille, @Yura, and @Lafayette coursed the sound.

it would be impossible -- no, unlikely -- for them to find what they were looking for. the first two beaches they canvassed had nothing.

the third held a glimmer of promise.

there! sobeille scented the breeze and motioned at them both to come close. they stuck to cover,  peering over the dark shoulder of sea-smooth quartz.

among the milling bodies laid a seal fat with milk, three puppies nursing at her gravid belly.

they would have only one shot. the graveness of this was known to each of them.

let's go, sobeille whispered, the three of them fanning out from the stones.

  *    *    * 

sobeille did not realize how difficult this would be.

hours later, they dragged the seal by its caudal fins and throat back to sapphique. it was a three wolf job, easily -- sobeille almost wished for more given the seal put up a terrific fight up until the three of them managed to bash its head against stone.

moving a full grown, heavy seal up the cliff was laborious. by the time they rolled her into the den, her fins and throat were bloodied.

but she still breathed.

sobeille collapsed alongside the limp body, grinning at yura and lafayette. well done. every joint within her protested; her face and back ached. she laid there for some time before regaining enough strength to adjust the seal's position to the back of the den. containing the sea-wolf would be difficult. sobeille pondered large, chunky stones lining the den's entrance. enough to cut and scrape soft seal-belly dissuading escape, but easy for wolves to crawl over.

she brought sticks while yura and lafayette rolled stones to barricade it. and then, sobeille squeezed into the gap to reposition the puppies. she may not be their maman by blood, but they were her charge now.

she nestled @Panik by the seal's belly, and then @Tusakruŋa -- frowning as she realized that the seal's stomach bore no nipples like her own. how could this be? they saw her nursing! and the rich scent of milk flooded the cavern besides, prompting sobeille to nose along the soft flesh of the seal's belly until she came to the realization that unlike wolves, seals carried their milk close to their hind limbs.

she moved the pair again, watching the seal distrustfully. in hind-sight, it was provenance that she, @Astera, and @Dogfish had all built their dens right on top of one another. at the time she loved the proximity -- and now, she was deeply grateful for it.

sobeille's den would contain the seal; in the hours the puppies did not nurse, they would be safely stored in astera's. and dogfish's would be used to store fish, to keep the seal alive as long as sobeille needed her.

seal milk for sapphique's future. sobeille smiled to herself in quiet exhaustion.

It was a ridiculous idea. So ridiculous, that it might actually work.

The hunt was strenuous, and by the time the three had hauled the creature to the den Yura was fully spent. She wasn't sure she could even call it a hunt since no actual killing was involved, but still she found herself muttering quiet prayers to sooth it's spirit as they situated it within the den.

After all, it was a necessary evil. The two newest wrigglers were too young to eat her chewed up meat; Yura wasn't even sure they had teeth yet, unlike the other four. She stared at them now, watched them suckle with deep fascination, momentarily forgetting the ache in her body and the trickle of her own blood as it mixed with seal.

What did seal milk even taste like? Was it salty like the sea it came from? Such intrusive thoughts drew a tired chuckle from Yura as she flopped down to rest and observe the babes. There would many sleepless nights to come, but for now they might live. And that was all that mattered.

comparing the size of this corpulent seal to the premature twins served only to highlight the immense disparity between them, and had tusakruna the ability to look and to see this body she was now perched beside, she would not see the dearth of meat and fat; the marbled flesh of the seal held a closer relation to a boulder, and the girl was the receding shadow curling beneath it.

mewling and hungry, it would take time and great effort for her mouth to align with, and close upon, a source of food—but that did happen, and she did drink.

the den filled with many scents and sounds: blood and the gentle murmuring of yura; salt, puppy breath, and soft mewling cries.

each of their efforts was rewarded when the first puppy latched to alien teat. sobeille held her breath, glancing to yura in apprehension. would it work? would it be enough?

only time would tell.

she collapsed alongside yura, their flanks touching as together, they watched sapphique's future nurse.