the salt stuck in her fur, heavy with brine and wind.
saila moved along the coast, eyes tracing the horizon. seafoam licked the rocks as the tide pulled back. the day was quiet but for the gulls, and the slap of waves against stone. she knew this stretch—a place known to birth seals.
and there they were, thick on the shore below, glistening bodies stretched among slick kelp and sunwarmed stone. her breath held.
a good sign. her people would say oil father was watching.

---

AW but Isulix

---

and there is seal hunter, isulix, perched in hungry wait.

close enough to taste salt rising from below, where foam churns against rock and shore. there is a stink of oil and fish, that triggers salivation in the hunter. he is not yet fully conscious; only in the rhythm of what he has always known.

the hunt.

he is yet to realize he is not where he once was.

he descends slow, where nails click upon stone and wind comes to brush hastily through his sea-matted pelt. shimmering with a healthy sheen deriving from his diet of sea creatures and seal blubber. each ledge slick with spray, but of no consequence to paws that have charted worse.

there, ahead, isulix's sea glass gaze finds a narrow shelf angled over a spit of flat rock slicked black with algae. the tide low, the seals come up here to bask, fat and heavy, sluggish with cold. down the shelf, onto the rock; seal hunter goes, and there seal hunter strikes. his jaws clamp around the neck and the seal shrieks once before the crack.

the others slide frantically for the water, but it’s already red.

---

saila had been still as stone, body folded atop the windswept rise, eyes on the seals. she'd marked the fattest one for her next attempt, tracking the way it blinked slow, dumb with comfort. but then—
movement.
she shifted her weight, breath caught between her teeth. he was not of this land; she could tell from the way his limbs moved like currents—fluid, certain, as if he belonged to the sea as much as the beasts below. grey-furred, scarred, slick with oil and salt.
a seal hunter.
her own kind.
her eyes followed him as he descended, ghostlike, until fang met flesh and the water turned dark. her ears flicked at the shriek. a clean kill.
she rose from her perch, casting a shadow long and still across the stone, and waited for him to notice he was not alone.