Stavanger Bay let me down to the rest of the world

sandpiper stood against the whipping wind, her muzzle held directly against the squall with the long wisps of her tail bowing starkly away from her lithe frame. the bay had been thoroughly scoured, and no evidence of settlement existed within its wave-washed bones. eventually, they would challenge its empty halls with conquest -- but for now, sandpiper looked over the choppy bay where the grey sea spanned into an endless fog.

it was a cold place, but a place not unlike home. she wondered how her father would feel to learn that they had made it, they had witnessed the frigid depths and swum to the tall spires that marked their end of the gauntlet. sandpiper had completed that task this morning -- bone-tired but proud, she now stared over her dominion with the coldness of a wolf borne of the rough sea.