Seaside Moors the first taste.

Moving due-south of the strange trees with its playful occupant, Nukilik wondered what she may find further inland. She did not manage to go very far before the sparse greenery of the plateau with its trees gave way to more rock, with dense chaparral wedged in clusters across an uneven hill. She picked her way along this expanse for a few hours - until it surrounded her in every direction - and then paused to gather her bearings.

The terrain was difficult for her; it was pock-marked, with grainy hard-packed soil for the most part, and there were many abutments of knobby basalt that looked almost barnacled at first glance. It wasn't, of course. Nukilik examined a few of the lighter patches speckling some of these giant tooth-shaped exposures and found they were discolorations, not growths.

She snorts to clear her nostrils of the earthy scent, and then settles for a moment on to her haunches beside a cluster of vibrant little flower buds clinging to a reedy bush of some sort; it was growing aggressively between two slabs of rock, but had not bloomed yet. It was a rock rose, she presumed. Her mother had once tried to each her to identify such things but... It was yet another aspect of coastal life Nukilik had not excelled with.

As the warm wind changed direction and blustered from the south, she thought she smelled something familiar - and for a moment thought of Hua and Ying, which brought a regretful expression to her face before she banished them from her mind. It did no good for Nukilik to think of what she'd abandoned; she had a debt she must pay to the sisters should she ever encounter them again. The smell beckoned her again, and so she rose to her paws and began to slow but steady prowl south, to where the smells were concentrated, and then halted again with her nose buried against a patch of struggling moss.