Black was struck by the wash of Aquarian's abrupt departure, the massive dog lifted and thrown back quite a distance by its surge. As he scrambled back to his feet, soaked, consternation etched his features.

He glanced around sharply, but found that Wilder seemed to have somehow avoided it. With a rumble he shook himself out, then padded back over to her, trying to ignore the brief surge of adrenaline that had come with being nearly washed away.

"...He did not eat us," Black wisely observed. Aquarian had appeared, to him, to be quite out of patience by the end. "It is good. Do you require further guidance?"

And here the black guardian looked out over the water, and then back to Wilder, as if awaiting her orders.

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Black opened his jaws--then closed them, again; the kitten was already gone.

It struck him--and he was not normally the observant sort, not when it came to personalities--that the kitten was rather oddly self-absorbed. She seemed to see through a lens of her own making, one rather detached from the rest of the world.

Of course, so did he; he simply didn't realize this.

With a mental shrug he turned, shivering a little from the lake's wake, padding quietly away into the marsh.

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