Sea Lion Shores 1957

She tried to run, but her limbs were stopped by the cold and by grief, twisting and locking and tripping her up as she tried, desperately, to reach a place where this pain could not touch her. Instead, she feel harshly, jaggedly into the pebbly stones that made up this beach, a howl that was part rage and part grief bubbling up out of her mouth. The cry went on past its prime, changing and mutating into a hollow and unearthly shriek.

Doe writhed on the sand, sobbing and screaming intermittently. Pain - physical, this time - lurched through her bones, and the red woman's body began to shake and sieze. If Szymon had been there, he might have recognized her motions as being the same ones that'd taken her on the beach, that day they first met. He might've seen that her willowy figure had been turned sharp and raw-boned by her sorrows, her inability to feel the hunger that ate away at her flesh.

Eventually, the fit subsides, and there laid a thin, red mass of quivering fur in Doe's place. She panted, choked little sobs still escaping her from time to time, but beside that, she laid quiet and still.