Dragoncrest Cliffs Seal of approval

Down at the shoreline.

This was not Tiden's preferred haul-out site, but earlier today the beach he and his companions frequented had been already occupied. Or rather the spindly-legged fur-beasts had lied in wait for the seals to come ashore in order to attack them mercilessly. The old man, who was so very awkward and slow on land, turned out to be pretty agile, when it came to facing danger. He had not stayed to see, if everyone had been just as lucky, which is normal for their species. They are not particularly fond of living in a pack. 

But - being a creature of habit and his nap long overdue - he had to find another suitable place. Such came in a form of a small rocky beach, bordered by a cliff wall so tall, that it seemed to end somewhere in the sky. Tiden surfaced from the water and on the third take got his 200 kilos of fat, flesh, bone and personality a top a flat, sun-warmed rock. There with a happy sigh he rolled on his back and fell asleep.

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.

Thank you for making my evening with cat videos. They never disappoint! :D

Huh? Tiden knew that he was not the same agile and elegant beast on the ground compared to, what he was in the water, but even he was impressed by the show of gymnastics this seaweed was capable of. Reminded him of fish and he then idly wondered, if these odd creatures were just another kind of meal. After all did it matter, where the fish came from - sea or the land - they were fish all the same to him. 

With the notable difference that fish, when scared, scurried away and did not care to turn around and have a look at the creature, who was hunting them. Having the very considerable advantage of mass that was probably five-fold compared to the furred alien, he stared back.  

<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.

I think it may also have to do with imprinting on food? Like cats, if they have not grown up, eating dry food, they won't touch it. We people are pretty much the same. We eat, what we are taught to eat. And are very suspicious of stuff that we do not know.

All studies of animal cognitivie capabilities have one very serious flaw - humans measure the intelligence of other animals against their own. They think of themselves as a benchmark, the one's at the top. In reality, intelligence is a relative thing. You can not really compare it between species, because the context of the conditions and environment they live in require different manners of thinking and problem-solving. 

Take a desert woodrat, for example. It will probably not solve secrets of the universe. It has no interest in global economics or politics. It won't engage itself with philosophy. Not very intelligent in the human world, is it? But then place the human in the desert and wait and see, how that math, physics, IQ, grand thoughts and ideas, superior mind helps them survive entirely on their own. It is very likely that they would not thrive for long in a place desert woodrat calls its home. Who is more intelligent?

Same here. Tiden did not speak the common tongue of the aliens. By the same token, they did not speak his language either. Was he more stupid than the other? He did not reply, just inhaled and exhaled and continued to stare at the furry fish. 

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.

Yeah, probably, there was nothing else in the furry sea-weed, whose motivations on invading Tiden's personal space were still not clear to the seal. He was very sleepy and constantly watching the antics of the little alien was becoming annoying. 

Right before Sobeille went for the second go of his rear flippers, Tiden had moved awkwardly and tried to rearrange his position to a more comfortable one. What he had not taken into account was that the flat surface he was lying on was not very even around the edges. 

So the same moment the young wolf's teeth made contact with Tiden's flippers, the seal made a side-ways move, a sound of rocks scrambling beneath him followed and the next thing he knew he was sliding backwards in the water and eventually fell in with a huge splash. 

what she had not anticipated was the creature's bulky move. as he slid backwards, she jumped away -- more interested in her own safety now than injuring him.

the water was his domain. sobeille understood this implicitly and crawled upon the rock he'd been on moments before, peering into the water to see where he'd gone.

he did not resurface. sobeille would not risk life to pursue him. after a while of studying the waters, she slipped back to sapphique, wondering what culture seals had among them.