the roads that you take may just crack and break,

The little sea-waif was fast upon her chores when she heard the approach of another, and with all the stiffness of an old crone she froze and her sharp eyes rose upward. Nishu Inte's white-tipped muzzle fell into few and she regarded him coldly -- if for a moment -- before resuming her tidy scavenging.

There was still much to be done and the creature was in no mood to entertain small talk; with a contemptuous wave of her sickly tail she trotted off towards the flattened sand by the seawash, her long snout trailing the receding water. Without any words she set to digging with a great amount of vigor, heaving sloughs of sloppy wet sand into the air -- uncaring of the direction in which the sand flew.