Sea Lion Shores The primordial dogs of God

Buffeted by bitter winds and crouched low in the clinging sand, the frost snake Furiosa lay in opportunistic wait of a moment to strike. Her target was a wounded sea lion— a bull beyond its blubbery prime, suffering a deep and agitated laceration against the side of his thick, rolling neck. The seafaring mammal flopped up the beach, coming unavoidably closer to the tufted dune that concealed his stark, carnivorous demise. She watched him intently, pupils engorged in blackness as the pace of her heart quickened and the moisture in her throat thickened. Even with a disadvantaged sea lion, she was playing her odds pretty tightly. Though this seemed to matter little to the audacious wretch of stone and ice.

Gray clouds hovered, their slow swirl ominous as if to prelude the funeral; and as the first drops fell, a watery parade for the coming dead, Furiosa fled from cover and dove viciously into the warm, welcoming tear of the sea lion's collar. His angry cries sent a panic through the wharf, and the scent of fresh blood caused a mass migration of bellowing seadogs floundering into the ocean churn. Their old competitor would never join them again, however, as his lifeforce was drained through severe and terrible ripping rent upon him by unforgiving teeth and scythes.