Ankyra Sound The sand between my toes

skyfire may well have known what a wolf was, but valravn, scarcely more than nine months on this earth, had no idea that there was something earthside as peculiar and endearing as a horse.

in another attempt to search for regin, val had made his way very carefully down the slopes from the cliffs above. after a few hairy moments where leg breaks seemed almost certain, the boy finally hit level ground and was peering up at a tree that was bigger than anything he had ever seen. "whoa!" val whispered, hushed and wide-eyed as he scampered around the circumference of the tree. with normal trees, this might take several seconds -- but this tree was so big, val's vision of the path he'd taken downhill was totally obscured, and he arrived breathless back where he'd started a full minute later.

something about this area seemed magical; there was a fairy-tale aura to how immense and dark and old this forest was. it put the young boy at total awe, and he wandered as if struck towards the rim of the forest where a beach lurked just along the tree line.

val, however, had no love for beaches. the dark-sanded coast received a cold side-eye and a wary snort - he might be inclined to explore the dunes away from the beach, but he was certainly not risking his hide getting anywhere close to the water.

he was about to turn back towards the midland when something dark and huge moving along the beach caught his eye. val peeked from the forest with a careful squint, sniffing curiously at the briny air. it was far too large to be a wolf -- too tall to be a deer -- he had never seen a moose. the only natural conclusion he could arrive to was that somehow, he had walked down the slope and bridged some hidden world into the land of giants and leviathans -- and the thing strolling towards him, much like the tree, was just another giant fixture to this fairy-tale place.