Though many moons had passed since he'd officially been allowed to call Inferni a "home", if it was at all possible of being such, Gaël still could find very little to take comfort in this new place that laid claim to him. Everything about Inferni frightened him: it was all skull and crossbones and a perpetual dark, intimidating aura that was carried in the wind and never died down. For heaven's sake, they'd staked wolf skulls around the borders, and unsurprisingly it didn't quite sit well with the half-wolf-but-in-slight-denial Gaël. His meetings with Halo, Ezekiel, and Gabriel had all been frustratingly brash as the newcomer's flesh resembled a wolf; he felt unwelcome and out of place, and such feelings drove him away from the territory to breathe. He could not leave Inferni, no; they were the perfect ones to teach him to fight. Something he'd seen in his clanmates' eyes demanded that he endure and make do. Gaël was hardening, slowly, but for now, he needed the space to get away.
Skipping rocks was hardly enough to break the inner tension, but it sufficed. The Waste was something he hadn't gotten to explore quite yet, as it laid on the opposite side of his clan where he had not approached from. The land between Inferni and Phoenix Valley was memorized in his mind; he could had traveled it backward and blind and still known the perfect and fastest routes to his raping, one-eyed father and susceptible little sister. Gaël had found the uneven and dangerous territory too much to bother with in his testy and impatient state of mind, thus he strolled along the coast, flinging small pebbles he came across over the ocean's cresting waves with a skilled flick of the wrist. Each pebble made a long, bumpy journey over the sea's face, not one falling prematurely to its watery grave. He was not plagued with thoughts: Gaël preoccupied himself with tossing stones and humming, maintaining the easygoing attitude he was known for but had stifling while within the venomous clanlands. Though his eyes were distant, some commotion caught his ears and alerted his sight to watch a white-hued something scatter ungracefully down a knoll in the distance and land face-first into the sand. Though tempted, he made no particular haste to aid her, instead shoving his hands into the pockets of his worn black jeans and strolling on as if nothing had happened.
Gaël had just assumed he'd walk on past her like two boats passing on the sea, unspeaking and unflinching, but she had regained herself by the time he was in her proximity and was now dancing her fingers through the grains of sand. The yearling stopped immediately behind her, peering over her shoulder with youthful, striking eyes, before remembering that he was supposed to be intimidating, bloodthirsty Inferni material, and thus kicked a mound of sand over her drawing and shrugged. Hands still in his pockets, he gaped at his destruction very indifferently, not even the slightest color of red in his nonchalant eyes. That was that, he guessed, and just as quietly spun on his heel and continued away.