Coconut Grove Strange fruit

73° Early afternoon

Umi stared at it.

It was massive. The cat had never seen anything quite like it in her short life. A huge, green, plump thing had fallen into the grey sands of the beach from a tall tree. Its leaves were way up high. She peered at them, circling the tree, quite careful to avoid the big green ball. There was one more big green thing on the tree; she feared it, too, would fall, and she shifted about nervously, staring with wide blue eyes. That tree was not about to bomb her with a big green thing, of that she would make sure.

Hopping toward the green ball on the ground, she moved her head from side to side like an owl. She inched toward it as though approaching a steel trap, jumping slightly every time the ocean lapped a wave onto the sand noisily. At last, she was so close that she hazarded a nasty poke with her paw, claws extended. She jumped back, terrified of its potential revenge. When the thing did nothing, she repeated the experiment, poking it again. After the third time, the young puma grinned, and immediately launched herself onto the coconut.

Her claws slipped very nicely into the green husk of the fruit. It was extremely satisfying to gnaw on it and bunny kick at the husk, for she could feel the damage as she attacked it. Umi must have looked quite silly, kicking her back feet into the weird thing and biting at it, growling playfully.

The stony ledge she perched on led down to a mess of crushed shells, bits of sundried weeds, and refuse pulled to the shore by the ocean. All of this was familiar. From the scent of the air to the feeling of the coarse materials beneath her hardened paws, to the image of the inconsistent ridge she had rediscovered. Rather than follow her whims and head to where the ocean frothed at the edge of the world she had deviated in reverse, finding a route that felt easier as the soil became more solid, soon enough becoming a series of slate-colored plateaus. The wind was more aggressive here; there weren't many obstacles to contend with except for some smooth-barked trees standing tall, and around these Nukilik paced.

She was a little bit older, a little bit wiser, but otherwise unchanged. There was no ponch to her belly as might be present for a new mother, and such an absence was telling. She had ventured far on her hunt for a husband and returned with nothing but an empty belly. The absence did not bother her too deeply now, but she was lonely, and her eager sniffing of the soil as she prowled was evidence of that. She found a foreign scent upon the base of one of the strange trees and paused, finally lifting her head out of her usual slouch to look around...

It was then that something moved, but distantly. It was not on her patch of plateau. A buff-colored shape was a safe distance away, further along, where the exposed stone vanished beneath wet sand. She ducked her head a few times in order to judge the distance (as well as try to discern what exactly she was looking at) and then, curiouser by the moment, moved closer.

There was an odd dragging sound beyond the pulse of the tide; she heard the ocean roll in, out, and then in again, while this otherness persisted. As she descended along a narrow gap among the stonescape and emerged a few feet lower, with her paws crunching against a dry recess of sand, she paused as if startled by her own sounds, and then looked around, noticing... Something. Not a wolf, she assessed. It was largeer than her and coiled up against the ground with an orb-shaped object clutched close.

As the naive cat pried at the green ball excessively, she started to feel the husk giving way in parts. This was altogether quite an exciting discovery, for the thing could come apart! Umi began pulling at a started strip of the husk with her large teeth, pressing down on the nut violently with her paws, claws hooked into it. The strip pulled free, and she grinned wider.

At that point she was standing over her weird ball. A shape not too far off was looking at her. She surmised a coyote or a wolf, due to its build. Umi sniffed at the air curiously, her smile faded and a stupified look replaced it. Friend or foe? she called out, sniffing still but unable to detect anything from her upwind position. Only the breeze surrounded her. The coconut lay sadly on the sand.