Heave. Slide. Heave. Slide. Heave. This was the rhythm Galleon had known for the past two days. That was the rhythm she followed to this very moment. She'd escaped Ursa. Took brief respite in the soft sands of Leo. They weren't right. They were wet. Clung to her scales and her jets. It was among the many reasons Galleon did not want to rest in Leo for long. She felt a sort of fear that the raptor was out there.
Just behind her. She would come looking for her at any moment. And it was that which kept her going. Forced her to crawl through the expansive cave of Gemini, with nothing to bury herself in. Heave. Slide. Heave. Slide. She pulled herself forward once more, her claws finding little purchase on the wet rock. At the very least, this cave was warmer than Ursa had been.
Galleon paused. Then she kept going. Her eyes were focused on a tower of white. Heave. Slide. She pulled herself straight into the pile of bones. The resulting clatter, as they all fell around her, was very much audible. And then, Galleon collapsed. Her tail and fins stuck out awkwardly. But the bones were dark. Comforting, and ironically, a terrible sleeping bed. They stuck awkwardly into her stomach. The child's raspy breath left her in a rattling, full body sigh. She shifted, and hollow cracks echoed as she crushed bones beneath her.
Galleon settled into her temporary rest spot quickly. The shark was only awake for a moment longer. Her journey had been taxing. Her eyes flickered out like a faulty bulb. The shield slid over them. And she began snoring. Softly at first, accompanied by wheezing breaths from her jets. It would grow louder as time went by.
@Bayo
Bones shifted. A voice. The shutters on Galleon's eyes flew open. The cyan glow returned in full force. An agressor? An attacker? Jaws snapped open. She twisted in a half thrash, half bite. She pushed forward. Her jaws met something hard. Her head pushed through the bone pile at the same time that they snapped closed. A plume of white dust blooming.
Her eyes focused on the brown dog-creature In front of her. Not green, not massive. The baby galleon sighed in her rattling voice, jet's whistling. The broken femur dropped from her jaws. Galleon was still tired. All her limbs ached. She made a half-hearted motion to sink back into the bones. Her eyes dimmed, resolved to just sleep here. Galleon hissed. "Likess...dark..."
@Bayo
If Galleon's eyes could squint, they would have. Instead, it was that same blue gaze. She watched Bayo closely. The dog hadn't left yet. But it also hadn't attacked her either, nor did it have the white fuzz. Bayo wasn't
explicitly trying to hurt her. Not yet. Her head tilted in the direction Bayo pointed, slow enough that it seemed almost lazily. Then back to him.
"Comfy...?" She rolled the word around in her mind, trying to extract the meaning from it. A light bulb seemed to go off in her head."Warmth?" Galleon still had yet to move. The young shark was either too tired, or too cautious. She breathed out, whole body whistling. "...Why? Fuzz...Mother?" She asked at last.
@Bayo
Galleon was warming up to the idea of the burrow. "Can..." She wheezed again." Can dig in den?" She asked. The slow warm up was instantly shattered. As it turned out, offering to take Galleon to Mother was the exact wrong thing to say. "NO," Galleon roared, her heavy jaws closing with a click.
Seeing the Mother character was the last thing she wanted to do, given her last experience. Well intentioned it may have been, but it was not well received. She thrashed in the bone pile and it came crumbling down around her. Galleon whipped around, hard enough that her shovel-shaped face almost touched her tail tip.
Galleon drew in air, preparing to jet away. It didn't help on land, but the instinct was still there. Using her last burst of energy, Galleon pushed forward. She flopped like a rather front-heavy seal, driving herself away from Bayo with hard pulls of her flippers. Dust flew up around her, pushed into the air by the discharge of air.
@Bayo
Galleon kept running, panting as she continued to push her body. She heard the click clack of nails on stone as Bayo pursued her. Gradually, they faded away. She heard nothing but her own breaths and the scrape of her claws on stone. They weren't pursuing? Galleon paused, still breathing heavily. She was tired, and she was alone.
She turned around, watching Bayo with blank eyes. She was still as the bones, not even twitching. This lasted for a good long while. A flipper twitched. Cautiously she dragged her front pair forward. Then the other pair. She slowly crawled towards Bayo, pausing to regain her breath now and then. At last she stopped a couple yards from him. Her quad eyes staying glued to him. "Den?" She asked quietly.
@Bayo