Sea Lion Shores this ain't no place for no hero.

The girl had progressed to following when the other three left the den, though it was not with the same boisterous intent as her cousins. Moorhen trailed after their shepherd like a toy dog pulled by a string, never growing closer or futher from the safety of her shadow. Seashells don't walk still sometimes rang in her mind, but more often, she was content to be the small, stoic shadow of Shadow.

Her face, previously a stone set of indifference, now sometimes gave small, tremulous hints at her emotions. Happiness, most often, because negative feelings sent her spiraling back toward her natural state of seashell.

But today had been good. She liked to see her cousins having fun. She liked to go on walks with Doe's Shadow. She liked the ocean, liked the warmer weather, liked the shift of sand beneath her paws.

What she didn't like was strangers, especially not when they were so close to Julep. Moorhen felt a strange urge to do something deep in the pit of her belly, but she ignored it, having no sense of how she was supposed to act on this urge. Instead, she merely froze where she was, falling out of the Shadow's shadow as she metamorphosed into a seashell.