Sea Lion Shores and like the sky my soul is also turning

for Atlas!

She had managed to escape the thrum of the hive; there were too many unknown wolves and to her the unknown meant the unpredictable -- and what existed outside of her knowledge existed without her consent. Fitful and nervous, she had skirted around nearly every waking Nereides and true to her coyote heritage, slunk off undetected under the guise of a frightfully slow dawn.

She picked her away along the shore with her head held down; to an outsider it may have looked like she was scavenging. However, she passed spindly crab and jellyfish alike -- her eyes trained to the monotonous sand for shrouds of kelp or ancient seashells.

She moved briskly and worked with a tidy efficiency. Before long the skeletal creature had amassed a small trove of miscellaneous artifacts regurgitated by the pounding sea.