Gilded Bay brine

The half-rotted carcass of a harbor seal was what had sustained him for the past week. Now it was dwindled almost to nothing, and Crosscurrent was forced to hunt for himself. As much as he was willing, anyway. A few stolen eggs of seabirds, a couple of fish. That was all he needed.

It just seemed such a waste of time. The gangly boy preferred to spend his days nosing through the sands or among the scant coastal foliage, cataloguing all that he saw and smelled. The salt of the sea was a sweeter taste than the metallic tang of blood, anyway. He didn't like hunting.

So eventually he returned to the picked-over corpse of the seal, gnawing at its bones while his gaze drifted out over the waves. Contemplative, though he was decidedly not thinking about how he would inevitably have to hunt something.