Shimmering Sands Danger, Will Robinson

He'd been lurking about the tidepools for some time now, creeping about and most often plucking himself a juicy meal of well-salted meat from the lush smorgasboard the small hollows of water frequently offered. The sun had risen, and set, and risen and then set again, and still, he scurried about all mouselike and lingered in the area. His belly had made itself content enough and no longer wound in quite such a tight knot of anxiety... but increasingly he was feeling it was time to depart.

It wasn't the first time he had told himself so. Earlier that night, in fact, he had made up his mind to depart, only to find his road blocked once again by the star-limned silhouette of a magnificent buck picking its way across the glimmering sands in the night. Blasted deer! Once he could sweet-talk his feet into moving again, as trembling he stared after the deer as it sauntered out of sight over the next sandy rise, Driftwood beat an ignominious retreat back toward the tidepools, whence he had remained for the rest of another night.

Now, standing on the precipice once more (albeit now a little more to the north), he took a moment to gaze out over the gently-lapping ocean waters shining in the fresh sunrise before inhaling deeply, leaping out among the bobbing waves and starting to determinedly paddle eastward. His dogpaddling paws made interesting patterns in the roseate-hued early morning light reflecting off the ocean waters, but his eyes were drawn much more to the specter of the retreating shore off to his right, and whether or not another sneaksome, interfering ungulate was planning to make a repeat appearance there. Most any other critter, he thought he could handle...even crabs, so long as they kept theirdistance! Just not another of the hooved ones, please.

His breath plumes around him like mist in the early day. The bright sun tinting everything varying pinks and oranges, causing his blue-gray fur to look rusted red in the colors of a new day. 

His muscles work in overtime and the pads of his massive, meaty paws thump along the grass and newly forming sand. The pale orbs of his eyes have only one prize in mind: a deer. A smaller, quite possibly younger, doe. She hardly just lost the speckles of white spots that come as a tell tail sign of a newborn fawn. Though she is young, she’s a fast one.

Ulysses massive size gives him the strength of a bear but the speed of, well for a lack of examples, a dying animal. At this point he’s realized his paws sinking into the sun kissed sands of the coast. The doe is having a harder time traversing the terrain as her hooves dive deeper into the sand than his wide paws, acting as snow shoes.

She makes one odd mistake and goes tumbling across the sand, fumbling as she tries to make her gangly legs work–she’s not quick enough as Ulysses jumps over her. He’s staring her in the face and she rears her front hooves knocking him a good couple times in the eyes and face but it does nothing to hinder him as he lunges and snaps her neck in between his jaws. She’s cries and he gives her a violent shake, her body following suit as she lies limp in his grasp. Blood intertwines with his fur and drips into the sand. But for now he’s got another meal.

Driftwood's sandy-furred paws stuttered in the water as the specter of a young doe suddenly came speeding into view, leaping and pirouetting and then starting to flail as her hooves hit the softer sands of the beach. For a long moment, Drift forgot how to breathe, his wide eyes riveted to the deer's form. As he froze up, his paws came to a halt too, with the rather predictable result that he began to sink.

The literal splash of cold water to his face, lapping up over his snout and tickling his eyes and ears with the spray of the next small wave, brought him a little more to his senses. Spluttering and choking, Driftwood flailed about a fair bit himself before managing a clumsy dogpaddled lurch a bit further away from the shore. As he bobbled there hacking and coughing and trying to clear his watering eyes for a moment, it did cross his mind that he'd've sworn he saw a dark wolfshadow there as well for just a brief instant...

Driftwood pushes himself awkwardly another leg-length away from the beachhead while craning his neck in that direction. His pipes aren't quite clear and still inclined to cough and hack, but at least he can sorta breathe again now and see much better through his eyes even if they still sting a little. For one heart-pounding instant he thinks this shadowy wolf figure is in truth a monster formed of strange, blood-limned shadows, but then the errant breeze carries the other's scent to him and he realizes it's deer's blood, intermixing with the strange red hue the sunrise limns the other's fur with. More concerningly, he doesn't see the deer anywhere however, and Driftwood paddles and shoves himself another half-leg's-length further out as he casts doubtful wild looks all around before realizing that the limp form between the bloody shadow's forepaws is the deer. And that none of her friends seem to have showed up to exact their revenge, thankfully. Driftwood coughs and tries to clear his throat before croaking across the fitful suntouched waves: Are you sure it's completely dead?

As Ulysses shakes the deer, he vaguely hears splashing by the very beach only a few meters away. Then when he realizes he hears another’s voice he freezes. He lifts his head up high and scouts for the source of the voice. Finally finding it he sees a soaking wet wolf, seemingly coughing up a lung. 

The awkward form of the wolf and those long legs and caramel peppered coat make Ulysses smirk just a little bit. The question that came from the stranger also helped to brighten up his previously boring day and night. Of course it’s dead he laughs internally. He’d be more worried if it wasn’t dead after that.

Ulysses starts at a trot to this stranger. Why not? Ulysses thinks, it looks like the poor guy just got done drowning and Ulysses isn’t a monster. He’d be willing to share breakfast with another fine soul this beautiful morning.