sobeille cast a bone upon the sand and studied its landing. the phalange half-sunk in the tide-line, its distal end pointed up.
she sighed. for all her studying, the answers hidden in the bones were no less muddy.
a splattering noise caused her to look up and see a seal — the seal — attempt to foist his weight upon the plateaued lip of a stone. on the third try he succeeded, flopping over in a manner that shook every ounce of blubber along his flesh.
sobeille left the bones, padding silently towards the hulking shape.
It seemed that there was no peace from the furred fiends no matter, where Tiden decided to take his nap. He cracked open one of his eyes, regarded the approaching wolf suspiciously. Then - as it continued to near him, he rolled on his belly with a grunt and his large, black bead like eyes scrutinized the canine.
"ARUMPH!" he roared in the general direction of the wolf, in an attempt to deter him from coming any closer.
she was close to the seal when he noticed her - almost as close as the last time. she recognized him by the old battle scars and roundness of his pelt; there were few other bulls like him that braved the mainland.
sobeille was utterly unprepared for the deafening roar that clapped from the bull's mouth. it was so loud, so violating, so powerful that she
jumped straight up, nearly losing her balance in the process.
she landed in a sudden heap, sand flying as she darted away. a ridge appeared down her spine from flared hackles -- but realizing the thing did not chase, sobeille circled back.
this time she did not get so close -- but she watched him with measured intensity.
<3 of course! my sister irl and I had a convo the other day about orcas and how there are no demonstrated attacks on humans where orcas ate them. I was thinking about how with most apex species meat is meat, they’ll try anything if presented the opportunity. So why don’t orcas eat humans, we are snack sized, right? My sister says maybe it’s like how we don’t eat bugs because they’re not appetizing. Maybe orcas view us the way we view bugs, too crunchy and not tasty therefore not worth the effort. Tilden’s thought process about fish reminded me of this, lol.
sobeille kept her distance. and the thing she kept her distance from stared right back.
once again she was captivated by those eyes. they were bigger than hers, reminding her of a flat body of water mirroring the sky; wide, deep, impossibly liquid.
she thought of the bird, who spoke to her. but this thing only bellowed and honked — perhaps it was not as intelligent. she knew his kind to be a source of food for the intrepid sea wolves — but alone, she stood no chance.
it provoked a thought; she often did not spare a second thought towards the intelligence of her meals. did seals think, and suffer, and weep, or have moments of joy?
you be pretty fat for a seal.
sobeille ventured at length, wondering if antagonizing him might bring out any semblance of intelligent banter.
when no decipherable language emanated from the beast in response, sobeille uncharitably assumed he was hardly more than a brick of scarcely sentient meat.
she slunk around the beast with head low, encircling in the manner of her kind. she looked for a weak spot - a slow turn, a lame flipper - anything that might signal an opening.
the beast was too fat and too large for her to assail his flank; she was alone, and it was risky enough eyeballing him like a ribeye. but if anything, she could test how fast he was out of water — and whether she had the chops to become seal-killer like cayetano.
sobeille ducked her head and rounded her spine, hopping forward in the hyaenid pose of a scavenger. she aimed a sharp nip at his exposed rear flipper, retreating instantly with her back arched and tail flagging.
Tiden was more amused than annoyed by the antics of the pelted stick insect that just kept prowling around him and keeping those tiny eyes trained upon him. He worried about her as much as a Great Dane would worry about chihuahua nibbling at its feet. In other words - not that much. He vaguely remembered that a while ago some of her kin had attempted to intrude in his realm and even catch him. Perhaps the thing was trying to do it now.
The nibble of his rear flipper earned a bored side-eye, as if the old man was saying - is that's all, what you got?
feeling her teeth rake skin, sobeille sprung back, expecting a toothsome reaction that never came.
the fur along her back stood up in spinal ridges; she cast a glance to the creature’s face, as if to read any emotion there.
he looked bored.
she flipped through her mental catalogue of prey-vs-predator reactions. this was not standard prey behavior.
was he a predator, then?
she walked stilt-legged around him, head bobbing up and down as she measured and reassessed the distance — and then she went in again for the same spot, this time a little harder.