Ankyra Sound meanwhile, buster was waiting in the hallway.

Whittier felt warmth flood his cheeks at the woman's response. He had expected her to share in his frustration; to admit that she'd found nothing either. But instead, she suggested that he wasn't trying hard enough. She then proceeded to ask if he'd ever lived by the ocean before, and he was quick to read condescension in the question even though it may not even have been there. He felt self-conscious before her easy humor, and it was easy for the teen to succumb to every perceived slight due to it.

"No," Whittier replied gloomily with a slight shrug, as though he wasn't at all bothered, "We lived on mountains and forests. Never by oceans. Or even... Y'know, big lakes." He felt the need to explain this to her, as though it would abscond him from any blame for not knowing how to find food in this place by the sea.