Gilded Bay all this pain and devastation, how it tortures me inside

His wandering takes him inland, only for him to be forced back when the locusts descend upon him. By evening, he is back on the coast, looking over his shoulder and wondering what it was he had just witnessed. The bugs are not so thick near the sea, but there are still some along the grasses and shrubs behind the tideline, and he draws nearer to them for a closer look now that their numbers are not so thick as to be blinding like a writhing fog. "Huh," he utters as he sniffs at a locust as it gnaws along the frond of some bush.

"I picked a bad time to leave the creek," he comments aloud, glancing up and down the shore and wondering how far the plague of locusts extends. But his pondering his interrupted by sobbing, and glances up the coast. He sees nothing, but with his ears turned forward he hones in on the sound. Peering around a tall stone, he spots a small, dark pup.

"Hey there," he says softly as he steps around the rock and takes a seat. "Where'd you come from? Bet all those bugs ran you out of your home, hmm?"