Sequoia Coast A land of barbarians

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Caiaphas touted her wares along the coastline, beleaguered by the cumbersome weight of the ungainly cache in her mouth. She bore a tilted carapace in her mouth, slung upside down and hollowed out and filled with small artifacts from the mainland. A land nautilus, stuffed with violent red clay from the inland rivers. The fractured skull of some queer rodent with wicked incisors. The narrow, moist head of a fungus she had found glowing maliciously in a cave near Neverwinter. Assorted plants and roots in no order, a calamitous concotion for the Mother.

She was not sure if the Mother Sea would be pleased with her trifle, but Caiaphas had taken great care to select small wonders and artifacts not found in water. She wondered if the Mother ever missed these things, so long diverged from their aquatic counterparts that they must appear gruesome and bizarre to aquatic life.

She was nearing the small clearing on the strand where she had last arranged her offerings when she saw the distant figure of a canine skulking. Caiaphas froze, her muzzle darkening -- and with purposeful strides she strode towards the makeshift shrine. She deposited (quite rudely) her wares and then strung into a headlong gallop, her hackles lifted in rifts and her slender legs outflung with abandon. Her aggressive resolve faltered then, when she saw the wolf was not a wolf at all but a coywolf like her -- and for a moment she stumbled and slowed to a lofty trot, her head held high as she yelled into the bitter wind: "OI!"