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 The water was brisk and cold as they stood, knee length on the shore. Malolo looked up at the sky, taking a break from the fishing to observe the clouds. All their days and nights living on the shore, and yet they couldn't remember ever having seen a storm brewing like this one. It left an electric feeling in the air that Malolo thought would leave their fur standing up if it weren't so wet.
 Malolo shook out their fur, trying to shake off the anxiety. Perhaps they should leave? Head for higher ground? Though the storm gave Malolo no sense of urgency, for it never appeared to get any closer. Just looming there and staring at the land, like prey and with malice. The blue-gray wolf couldn't tell what it was, though usually they could. All red sun at night, sailor's delight, and etc, etc,.
 They bent down, eyeballing the storm for just a few moments longer. Hanging their mouth open and their nose in the water, they stood oddly still in comparison to the waves that buffeted the shore. For such a large storm on the horizon, and a bit of drizzle in the air, it wasn't very windy. And thus the waves were rather calm, good for fishing.
 Malolo stood, staring into the water with intensity. The sound of the waves making it hard for them to hear if anyone approached them.
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Fomoir was bushed. He was also dusty, his fur had bits of grass and, somehow, gravel stuck in it, and he was sure that a flea or two had made its home on his skin. He had come from the plains to the west over the course of the last day and a half, from a hilltop where he had conferred with another wolf and a horse about the bizarre storms. Mutual fearful predictions of clouds reaching down to strike the earth, or floods washing out gullies and drowning creatures in burrows and dens, led Fomoir to want to investigate these frightening storms further. He had come to the Mountains, and specifically to the beaches where he had awoken, to try to learn more about what was going on.
 
As he crested a stony hillock, a light ocean wind flew over him once again. The wind was tame, hardly there at all, but it carried the scent just the same. Fomoir was really looking forward to a soak in the ocean. The saltwater would help clean him off, and get the damn pesky fleas out as well. He felt like it had been months since he had awoken somewhere around this same region, rising to some strange new world, staring up at a frozen moon. A bath in the sea might help shake off the uneasy trepidation caused by this bizarre weather.
 
But as he looked out to that water, he spied another wolf, already there on the beach! They were a dark-and-white furred creature, and though it was hard to tell, they appeared to be the same size as Fomoir himself. At the moment, they seemed to be looking at the water… Perhaps thinking? Meditating?
 
Fomoir suddently felt guilty for watching the other wolf without announcing himself. It was impolite, at best. The guilt wrenched at his heart with surprising strength, so he walked back down the rocky hill from whence he’d come, and then ascended it again. This time, upon reaching the top of the hill, he let out an easy, deliberate bark; an announcing bark, one might say. He wagged his tail slowly, his ears half-perked, and figured that with the roar of the ocean, he might need a louder holler. He barked a second time, louder, to get the attention of the wolf down below. If he saw welcoming body language, or even a return bark, he’d head down the hillock and get close enough to introduce himself, but not too close as to reveal how travel-filthy he was.
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 The sudden noise surprised Malolo but, the determination to catch something ate them up inside. They snapped into the water, half assed and rushed. They had been waiting for a fish to come closer to his open maw but, with such haste they snapped only on empty ocean water. The wolf growled a bit, mostly to themselves for being impatient.
 Malolo swung their head around, looking back and forth along the beach to inspect the source of the bark, when a second entered their ears. Finally the sea-wolf narrowed in on a speck of brown hidden among the earthy tones of the shore line. Similar sized and, by body language not looking for a fight. At least Malolo could assume.
 "Ey mate, not to be a tosser but- I was fishing!" They hollered back. Malolo looked back at the water and huffed before turning back to the sand and the beach. Knowing that missing had really been their fault. The water held down their fur a bit but, a million times over doing the same thing and it appeared not to affect them much.
 When the darker colored wolf had made it to the shore, they shook out most of the seawater from their coat. Sending splashes of seawater that clung and darkened the sand. Mismatched gaze staring at the stranger, expecting them to walk down and investigate.
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Fomoir wagged a little faster at the friendly callout the wolf gave; fishing! Well, that was something. He came down the hillock completely and approached diagonally, knowing that he looked like dusty hell. A beach wave surged in to rush over his paws, and Fomoir held there for a moment, enjoying the cool sensation on travel-worn footpads.
 
”Hey. Hi.” Fomoir said casually now that he was within earshot. The lack of strong winds meant that the only ambient noise was the pleasant washing of the waves soaking into the sand. ”Pardon the interruption. I was coming here to wash up and enjoy the beach, and figured I should announce myself, when I saw you.”
 
Fomoir plopped down into the water, dropping his belly right into the rising and falling waves. It felt damned good, washing up against his ribs. He imagined a few frightened little fleas dropping off into the seawater. Hopefully this beach-wolf didn’t have sharp-enough eyes to see that! Fomoir looked over this other wolf, trying to tell whether they had succeeded at all in catching any fish. He didn’t see any bones nearby…
 
”I’m Fomoir. I woke up here a… while ago.” He blinked slowly, trying and failing to remember how long ago that was. He cocked his head. ”I… hope me being here doesn’t make your fishing harder. If it does, please let me know.”
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 "Malolo." They said quaintly, feeling as though it was only considerate to share your name if one offer's theirs to you.
 "Ah don't worry about, I wasn't having much luck anyway." It was a bit of a lie, there were plenty of fish flopping about the bluff but, it really didn't bother Malolo. The fool was fishing all the time so, it didn't hurt them if they had a little bad luck every once in a while.
 The blue gray wolf shared the same energy and plopped their ass square in the ocean water, they were already wet so what did it matter anyway. Letting the waves occasionally splash against the chest and fill their fur with salt and sand.
 The bluffs were nice, a warm breeze in the air that mixed with the ocean's cool one. The sound of waves, if Malolo ever stopped hearing them they would consider themselves mad. The way the land jutted out in cliffs before dropping harshly into the water below was quite nice to Malolo. 
 "Where ya comin from?" Malolo asked, drumming up a bit of friendly conversation didn't seem all that bad, being as they were practically both bathing in the ocean together.
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”The east.” the dull-brown wolf answered, his voice as distant as the lands he referred to. ”Trying to see how far this sky goes, how long it’s like… all that.” In the midst of a spray of ocean water against his body, he tilted his head up, toward the dark skies, and the looming clouds. ”I had hoped it was just a local thing, over at the hilly plains where I was. But every hour, every day I walked, I saw the same above.”
 
Feeling safe enough, Fomoir rolled over, kicking his legs to keep the momentum in the sand and the water. The cold flush against his back helped to wash away the warm soreness in his muscles there. More fleas ‘jumped ship’, thankfully. ”I was hoping that when I finally saw the ocean, I’d see the end of it.” Fomoir admitted. ”Malolo, can I ask… what have you seen of the skies? Do you… have any guesses as to why it looks the way it does?”
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  The dark colored wolf pondered as Fomoir spoke. They, too, had thought the sky so interesting and strange. Like a storm that wouldn't come or clouds that hung in the air the same way rocks don't. They were snapped from their brief trance of thought when asked a question, however, a Malolo stayed silent for a few moments longer to think of a worthy answer.
 "I've lived on the water all my life, seen storms and tsunamis, nearly died in a few floods m'self but, this?" The wolf sat back a bit, bewildered by what they saw. A slightly dramatic pause on Malolo's part. "No, I've never seen anything like that."
 Malolo looked back to Fomoir, trying not to seem too much off-put by the topic. "That's why I've been sticking around this place for a bit, quite easy to head to high ground in case it's something real dangerous, y'know?"
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At Malolo's revelation that they had lived in water all their life, Fomoir grinned and wagged his tail. A water lover! Fomoir believed himself somehow born from the sea, given the nature of his awakening in these lands, and he was excited to hear that they were a water-dweller. He nodded as Malolo shared that they had no guesses about the sky, and that they remained along the water for safety. "Well, I think that is very wise, Malolo. The skies, they... The skies are......" 
Fomoir halted his speech as a sound that had been growing steadily now rose to near-deafening levels. It was a crackling, a wild and dangerous sound like a swarm of thunderstrikes. Reflexively, Fomoir ducked, as though lowering his body would somehow dodge the cacaphony from above… And it as indeed radiating from the skies, echoing off of the landscape below, the sea seeming to amplify the static-like droning until…
 
Until the crash.
 
The swarm of thunderstrikes dispersed, or better yet combined into one single terrible destructive explosion. It was a sound with the level of power that broke mountains, that froze lava, that spewed a tsunami in the desert, that grew a jungle in a frozen tundra. It should have been loud enough to deafen every living creature in the strange lands of this world, and though it didn’t, it spread a brief spasm of madness through most. Sparks lit in the air, arcing from nothing and to nothing, and bizarre lights preceded and followed them. Somewhere far from Fomoir and Mololo, but still somehow within hearing, mountain goats brayed in terror, and another wolf cried and howled at the shock of it all.
 
Fomoir’s heart had gone cold, then hot with pounding terror, as his very soul shook. He dropped down to the water, belly in the frigid waves once more, his eyes wide and staring above. The skies themselves seemed to unfurl, like a blooming rose or a waking morning glory, and the clouds peeled back, and something new was there. A wolf, greater in scale than the moon, with fur and a body of starlight, was there, up there, existing in a way that maddened the mind and turned logic sour. Worse, the great star wolf was joined by more, a feline thing, and an equine thing, each as impressive and heart-quaking as the wolf, forming a trio of impossibilities above.
 
Fomoir could only stare, shaking in the water, forgetting who he was, and why he was here, and where and when and how…
 
What… was all this?
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