Seaside Moors I. It's too bad you didn't notice I'm ten feet tall.

Part I.

With a start Raleska woke to the raspy cry of a nightjar. In the moments that it took to chase sleep from her consciousness, she was aware of a dark screening of navy sky, cloudless and swarthy with twinkling stars.

And then it came again -- the real reason she had awoken --

A cry tore from her lips as a pain she had never known coursed through her like snakevenom. She gasped, reeling against the root-covered wall of her den. At once she felt a bolt of liquid fire shoot down and then up her stomach, followed by a lacing of boiling gurgles that made her reel in nauseousness.

Something was happening; she felt her stomach tuck as the pain faded, replaced now by a heated unhappiness that lurked in her guts like the remnants of something malevolent and odoriferous.

Then it came again; Raleska bent upright, startled by the ferocity of her nerves. This time, she did not rest against the earthy embankment of her den. With pain overriding her, the young Eyjolfur limped out of the mouth of her den and made at a hobbling pace towards the sea. She could think of nothing except the brace of saltwater, and how maybe sitting in that chilling seafoam would chase whatever demons lurked in her gut away.