Islands.
Ever the adventurer, Reef relaxes into the ocean's embrace once more, and this time the beach upon which she washes is a dark thing, craggy and imposing. As she sloshes out of the waves the first thing to hold her attention is the sand: wet and packed from the tide, it shifts like sludge under her hooves. It mounds prettily, too, and she spends some time with her dark neck arched to watch herself form tracks across the beach until, looking over her shoulder, she can see the drunken course of her own footprints.
She snorts, amused. There is an abrupt slope leading away from the beach, not quite a bank but certainly not a gentle hill, and beyond that even higher ascents. These she ignores for now in favor of the tall, rocky spires thrusting up at the shoreline. Reef counts three or four of them, and one that arches directly onto a huge fist of earth. Her eyes flick skyward, find the sun— perhaps she'll be here long enough to see whether or not it sets directly through that curved window.
The water here is loud as it laps against the stone. Littering the beach are the usual jetsam: shells and shellfish, the skittery crabs with their fat angry claws, and all around the smell of brine and wet rock and fish. Where the water cloaks the sand are thousands of pebbles. While she did not care to linger there as she came to shore, now Reef steps back into the tide's kiss and lowers her head to the rippling sea. They all look smooth as glass, dark and colorful and multitudinous, and she wants suddenly to collect them for herself. A little kelpie hoard, she hears the fond voice of her mother in the back of her mind. She snorts again and leaps suddenly out of range of the water.
The view from the cliff must be amazing. Reef turns her head to look up the beach, to the rocky grasses just beyond. It won't be a terrible climb, and she won't be out of earshot of the sea. There is no reason not to explore, and that jut of land to which the arch is attached seems to be calling her name. Up she goes, flinging crescents of thick sand behind her as she charges up the grassy slope and heads for the cliff that overshadows the beach. |