Sea Lion Shores くコ：彡

Focused on the creatures before him, Kubo hadn’t heard the woman approach. When she spoke, his entire body shot up like something straight out of a cartoon and he spun around to face her, heart pounding. At first, everything told him to just run—run and keep on running, stopping only when his legs collapsed beneath him. But as he stared, too scared to move, he processed; the female did not appear malicious, nor were her words particularly threatening. In fact, they weren’t threatening at all—just a question, nothing else.

Slowly but surely, the anxiety-ridden serpent calmed down. He did not relax fully but he eased up enough that his body could at least move again and he was breathing easy. “Maybe,” he eventually answered. “But I don’t, uh... I don’t have many options. I’m not... well, uh, I’m not... um...”—boy, was he embarrassed, he could barely even finish—“I can’t really hunt well... I mean, I can! But, uh... not things like those...” Rodents, yes. Lagomorphs, for sure. Large beasts that made loud noises and easily outweighed him, most definitely not.