Reach for daybreak through the stone

Her wife left home with the children, Esmerelda was out in search of her packmates this evening, looking for company that was not her usual; She knew the benefit of expanding her social horizons and despite the fact that she would love to be curled up with her family, the Siren of the Saltwoods was of the mind to make her rounds of the island and spend time with those that made their island home. Not only that but an absent alpha was like an absent parent, and she was of no mind to make any of the pack feel like she or Wake wasn't present, even with their youngest additions.

A pep to her step was found when she spotted the curiously colored @Poseidon in the distance, barking across the sands so that her voice reached his ears. He had always been positive company, company that the merle-coated woman thoroughly enjoyed. “Poseidon!” She said, happiness in her voice as she approached. “And what mischief are you up to today, my friend?”

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The pack had been "blessed," as his leaders put it, with new life. Poseidon felt stupid about the whole ordeal, or perhaps just confused. He had either not noticed that one of them was pregnant, or else neither of them had been pregnant and the puppies had come from somewhere else. He didn't understand who was feeding them, nor how one of them had been knocked up despite generally despising the company of penis-wielding idiots like himself.

So when Esmerelda found him wandering about on the beach, Poseidon forced a smile and just answered, “Heeeeey.” His tone was as though she was some friend he didn't really want to hang out with, but had a date to do so because it was the "polite" thing to do.

How had this happened when he hadn't seen so much as a fucking sniff of tail? Why hadn't they asked him to "donate"?

“Whale-watching,” he half-lied. There were no whales, he was just staring at the horizon waiting for answers that wouldn't come. “How are the little beasts? Probably already smarter than me, right?” He jested, mostly to break his own tension around the whole sitch.
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Her step faltered as Poseidon greeted her, brows furrowing as she surveyed him and tried to figure out... something. Was something wrong? Was she bothering him? Hm. She would ask him after she settled in, once the initials were all done and out of the way.

“Have you seen any yet or are they still out for the season?” She knew they migrated around the same time every year, and while she was not quite sure if that differed in these lands, somehow she doubted it. But, there were always the stragglers, too, so who knew. Maybe he had glimpsed one another day and was hoping to again.

“They are well. We are still... adjusting. To go from not having any to having five suddenly is... very different. Very challenging. But I am glad we found them, all the same.” Esme's tail swept the sand a few times here, happy, though she was also happy for her small break. “And you? How've you been doing?”

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“I'm pretty sure they're gone,” Poseidon answered, continuing to stare out at the horizon even though he had just confirmed there was nothing to see. A funny thing happened when you looked at the waves at a distance for so long. Your vision became jarred, snaking with tessellations of the water's pattern in jumbled ways, so that as far as the eye could see, the blue water looked like chaos.

Esmerelda went on, mentioning that the puppies had been an adjustment. He didn't really understand, and took this at first to mean that it was Wake who had been surprise pregnant. But then the lesbian mentioned that she was thankful they had been found.

Rather than answering her standard question with "Horny, obviously," he went back to her choice of words. “So you didn't find the mother, then?”

And then, pointedly, he failed to mask his emotions. “Did you look?”
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Whatever pleasantness and amiability had swirled within her was gone in an instant, the crash of a wave sweeping it all away to leave something more akin to hurt and upset. Her face contorted with an affronted, insulted look. Did he think so lowly of her? Did he think her to be some woman who stole another's children from them? Who stole their happiness, their world out from beneath them? No, taking such things was the work of gods and monsters, and Esmerelda found herself to be neither.

She parroted her own thoughts to him.

“You think so lowly of me?” The warmth in her voice had been iced out, periwinkle eyes stormy as she gave him a look that likely spoke of all her emotions in that moment.

“Of course we looked. When we found them, there wasn't any other scent on them, other than the sea who brought them to land. We searched far, to pick up any scent of a parent and there was none of any other than those of the Saltwoods.”

A beat of silence, and then a lower, colder tone.

“Is there anything else you wish to accuse me of?”

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