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

The little tiger shark’s abuse was nothing new to Coelacanth, who regarded the Matriarch with wounded Neptune eyes and dipped her finely tapered muzzle in an affirmative nod. Tufted ears flattened against the smooth slope of her velveteen crown at the whelp’s cruel dismissal, but the sheepdog stood her ground and scraped up what little crumbs of dignity she could muster. Seelie was a creature who wished only to be loved as she loved — but it simply wasn’t in the cards for her. She had wanted to love Kierkegaard and Marbas; she had loved Doe; and though she had learned to expect very little from Szymon Cairn and his children, she had hoped — especially with Moorhen’s blossoming, especially with Isengrim and Julep’s reduced aggression —

The atramentous ingénue’s plume went abruptly limp, a brushstroke of movement that swept along her hindquarters in a sinuous wave and repainted her silhouette into something dejected and broken: she turned to Moorhen in that moment and groomed the stoic, frozen little face, keeping busy in a futile attempt to hide her hurt. The barely audible patter of her haunches and tail as they puddled to the sand in a pool of indelible ink rained heavy in the silence that was all she had left. She would wait long enough to see if the weathered Amazon would take the girls, and then she would return to the bay where no one lived, to wait for the mistress who wasn’t coming home.