Water lapped, soft and serene, against the dark gravel of the beach. It was cold for the summer, the blustering windchill of the ocean cutting across the flat beach before it dissipated into the trees. The blue water had turned black with the frothing, darkening overcast clouds that sprinkled cold rain downwards. It dusted the trees and the shrubs, turning sunbleached driftwood back to a darker hue in little speckles. The scent of salt and chill overtook the scent of carrion-rot.

For a while.

A lull in the wind had it billow up and out, a faint, delicious little morsel for those who could stomach the carcasses of sealife. Which, unsurprisingly, a beast like Murgrind certainly could. Even with her jaw, crooked and jutting awkwardly, the narwhal who'd died and washed ashore finding itself perfect sustenance. Murgrind stands atop the corpse with it's guts bloated outwards, spilling darkly over the sand as Murgrind slams paws into it's side, unleashing a brutal CRACK! as ribs are shattered beneath her immense weight. Off does the Polar Bear step, swaying to the side and dipping her head down to nose along the now-brutalized side. It's broken enough for her to sink her teeth into the side, black lips peeling back as she shreds off an utterly immense chunk of blubbery meat. It's thick, oily between her molars, but it doesn't matter. The salty, fishy sinew is satisfying as she crinkles up her nose, loudly snorfing and huffing as she chews away in a delight befitting her juicy carrion prize.

Water was always a scarcity, back home. A treasure, a resource to be hoarded. Much blood was spilt over it.

And good god, she's never seen so much of the stuff her life. Blue, endless blue, stretching as far as the eye can see. Gaping, swallowing the sky in its mouth.

She creeps closer, ever a cautious beast, and swears the water breathes back. Some living, thinking creature. It reaches for her, washes over her feet with such quick fierceness that she recoils with a yelp and retreats toward the rocks. It does not follow far. She watches, then, from a distance, with narrowed eyes and curled lip. Settles only when she is certain it will not come for her again.

The rain starts soon after, and she tilts her face to the sky with parted jaws. A ritual older than she, passed from mother to child. Where the gaping ocean reeks of salt and brine, this tastes just how she remembers. Cold, fresh, soothing on the tongue. She drinks her fill, allows rainfall to clean old wounds— and is interrupted in her bathing by the sharp crack of teeth splitting bone. Wolf, maybe.

Or something bigger.

She turns, slow, and is met with a towering behemoth of bone-white. Bladed teeth rival swords in their might, gnashing with ease at sinew and viscera. And Häti finds, in this moment, that she is more hungry, more intrigued than afraid. Belly fur sweeps gravel as the coyote crawls forward, keeping to the beast's hindquarters. If she is lucky, it will be far too distracted by its own hunger to notice her. And if she is not...

Well, she can run fast.

"Ouh, tha's noice."

Quiet muttering between breaths that are utterly filled with narwhal meat, sinking teeth in with pointed, ravenous gusto. Giant claws sink and slice into flesh as her titan-sized paws keep it pinned to the ground, flexing toes to keep the damn thing in place. From the hind, it's splatters of almost black-looking blood flung every which way, arcing wide and splattering the bone-pale fur of her muzzle and forepaws scarlet in hue. It's brutal, but it's slow. Methodical. Unlike the feeding frenzies of smaller animals, the thing eats with a kind of conservative nature. They have to nurture as much energy as they can, after all.

"Can't be mad at'a bit a' that," she murmurs again, all the same to herself. A powdery-pale tongue flicks over their blackened lips, swiping away any lost gristle and viscera as a long strand of dark red, sinew-heavy meat droops from the corner of her snaggletooth, not yet noticed as she pauses for a breath. A breath a little too deep to not notice the strange waft of something nearby. The creature smells weird. Different. Not like the cool air or the salt or the putrefaction of decay. She can hear the bear sniffle and snuffle with loud, nostril-flaring huffs. A casual look around, and one brown-black eye catches the strange blot of warmth against cool-colored sands, behind one meaty flank.

And so, Murgrind backs up by a single step, half-facing the little coyote who lingers that stone's throw away. Too fast too successfully chase off, Murgrind reckons, like the devious little arctic fox. There's a long, thick pause, before her rumbling, raspy voice crackles forth.

"An' whadda you want?" A harsh upjerk of her head, battered face scrunching slightly in displeasure.

It moves faster than she would have expected for one of its girth and height, whirling around to examine her with a huff and an irritable grumble. Eyes like pools of ink stare her down. Hot, putrid breath fans the fur of her face, and a dangling tendril of half-chewed carrion flutters about the behemoth's lower jaw. Häti grimaces, bites back a gag and speaks.

"A bite or two, if it's all the same to you." She raises her head, and even then is unable to meet the sheer height of this thing. Did the ocean spit her out? Häti looks her over, from bloodstained face to snubby little tail, and with a nod decides she has no clue whatsoever what this thing is. Certainly no wolf, no coyote— no desert creature, for certain. A living, breathing mass of muscle and fur.

She lowers her head to inspect its massive claws, comparing them to her own teeth with a brief parting of her jaws. Mm, nowhere near similar in length or width.

"What are you?" At last she asks, blunt and shrill and grating all at once. Front paws shift beneath her, urging her to circle. Inspect further, examine. But some deep-rooted instinct tells her to stay where she is, allow this beast to decide she is not worth harming.

"A bite or two?" Murgrind looks at the little . . . thing. Let's call it a fox. They squint at this lanky, furless little fox with an expression of perplexed bluster. By the Stars is this the boldest little rat of a canine they've ever witnessed, and it's enough to coax a bark of laughter from her, scarred face crinkling up again in a far more easygoing way. "Whaddo you think this is, eh? S' it a charity or somefin'?" Clearly, her tone isn't insulted, more akin to flabbergastedness than anything else.

"S' 'ere 's mine, yeh? First come, first serve, an' all that. Law o' the ice, love." A loud SMACK! of the narwhal's side rings out as brutishly massive claws slap into it. "No wonder yer a skinny lil' fox, with the way yer goin' 'bout gettin' a meal!" Another snorf of amusement, shaking her head slightly with a slapping of her lips and a wriggle of that shred of meat that dangles from her maw. Enough, even to have her tongue flicking out again, chasing that shred away from her maw as she chuffs once again.

Her following question is enough to have Murgrind blinking, one eye after another, like a befuddled little frog. ". . . wot? Y' never seen a bear? Because that's wot I am, yeh?" The paw not on the corpse reaches up and thumps her chest, leaving a crimson smear on the point of contact. Even if this little 'fox' has seen a bear before, Murgrind is leagues bigger than black bears, than pandas, than grizzlies, than even your average female Polar Bear. "C'mon, lil' Foxie. Y' got eyes t' be seein' and a noise to be smellin', yeh?"

A notable flinch as the bear slaps her own chest. A pause, she considers her circumstances— and inevitably decides a monster this big isn't worth trifling with. Not without the element of surprise on her side, anyway. The soft thump of her rear hitting the ground indicates a shifting of interest— from food to the beast who possesses it.

"Not sure what the fuck a 'bear' is, but alright. Keep your fish, ol' girl." She eyes it from between those pillars the bear calls legs, and decides with a grimace that it doesn't look quite so appetizing after all. The word 'fox' sparks irritation in her gut, a twitch of her lip. She is no fox. She is a skulking beast, yes, guided by wit and by foresight. Clever as the sky is blue.

"I am a coyote," She corrects with a lift of her chin, prideful eyes shining. "Creeping in the night, stealing that which I can take. Bitin' things like you and running away." An enunciating snap of her teeth, lips peeling back in a grin.

The noise the coyote is greeted with is short, and sharp. "S' not a fish, yeh? S' a whale, that." Still. Smells like a fish, even if the texture and color of the meat is much more beast-like in nature. "Good fer yer bones, good fer yer teeth." She's likely just spouting out of her ass, for Murgrind couldn't seriously say if there were any health benefits to consuming narwhal.

Doesn't matter. She's shifting again, swinging her hind until her face is eye-to-eye with the coyote. All so she might eat and talk all at once, dipping down on powerful forelegs to shred off another immense hunk of raw flesh. Unsurprisingly, the ursine speaks with a mouth full, loudly chewing on that thick, waxy blubber as she tucks even further into her meal. "Well. Y' looks a fox, y' actin's a fox." The bear sniffs. "Seems 'nuff like a fox to be's one t' me. But, oy, a'ight, yer a coyot'e." Her innate accent butchers the word a touch, as does the mouthful of meat. "Wot's a skinny, furless lil' thing like ye doin' ere? Yer shiverin' out yer pelt, an it's summer." 'Summer', or, more accurately, the 'warm season' of Behemoth Brim. A dew days north, and she'd be in that shimmery, blustering cold that Murgrind called home.

"Looks like a fish. Smells like a fish. Bet it flopped like one when it was alive, too." The coyote stomps a (comparatively) tiny paw, as if to emphasize her point. It doesn't so much as dent the icy earth below.

"Furless?" It scoffs, offended, but there is no denying the winter-tinged tremble to its voice, nor the frosty chill in the earth which saps the warmth from its skin. She is a desert girl, born and raised— this she knows in her shriveled heart to be true. But the desert's people, like the God she once revered, abandoned her. And so she too has left them behind, those rolling dunes and sun-bleached eyes. She does not dwell on it long, keeping the beast's gaze with no shortage of skepticism.

"I've got plenty of fur, thanks. And even if I didn't—" It'd be none of her business, none of her damn business at all. But she does not spit her venom. "Coyotes are adaptable creatures, see. Nothing like foxes. As the temperature drops, my fur'll get thicker."

She grimaces, leaning away as that hulking creature chews with half-open jaws. She would much prefer hare, she thinks, or beaver. But beggars can't be choosers.

"We're scavengers too, y'know. Taking what big guys like you don't finish off."

They are nearly nose to nose now, and the sheer size of the damn thing is almost incomprehensible. A hulking white beast to block out the sky. Shoulders wider than any mountain. Wide black nares blow warm breath on Häti's face, whistling past her cheek fur. She tolerates it with a squint.

The 'fish' is only further ripped limb from limb, teeth finding blackening carrion bones betwixt her molars to fill the air with an intense GRIND-GRIND-GRIND. Gross, unsurprisingly, but the coyote opted to not just stay around, but move closer to that immense muzzle as it snorfed and flared with the exertion of eating. It's bordering on doggish, if not for the strange shape of her head and the extra flinging froth of drool that flew from her heavy lips. For a mercy, Murgrind does pause her eating to lick her chops, almost enough to batter the coyote directly in the nose tip with her tongue.

"Ehuh. Grow yer fur an' still turn t' a little cubed-ice 'yote." Thick black lips pull into a genuine, but uneven smile. She is, generally, an unserious individual. That doesn't, however, apply when someone is so damn close to her food. Back down her head goes, tilting her stronger side down like they're about to keep eating.

All at once, she lurches forward. It's not to try and crush Häti's face between her teeth. It's a warning bite, like a dog warning someone off of a prized treat. Immense, yellow-stained teeth CRACK! in the air as her jaws make contact with enough force to seal with a wretched popping noise. Then, back to eating she goes, still talking with her mouth chock-full of freshly-shorn flesh and blubber, nose flexing with a deep sniff. "Yeh. What we don't go an' finish off. Not what's up in my mouf' right now. Wait yer turn 'fore I pop ya like a seal's tick." Despite her words, it's a lighthearted warning. The bite in the air she considers enough of a warning, for Murgrind does not have the agility to defend her prize fully.

The beast lunges for her, open-mouthed, and Häti twists out of the way with a yelp— but teeth do not meet flesh. She makes note of this mercy with a sly glance, but obeys and trots a few body lengths away. "I certainly don't want what's in your mouth, you big lug. Not after you've drooled all over it." She falls to a seated position, one dainty paw wiping furiously at her drool-speckled face. Disgusting— she should bite back, grab that thing by the ears and pull! But she restrains herself. There is benefit to patience, yes.

Silence stretches tense and taut between them, broken only by the nauseating slurp, crunch of teeth and tongue against bloated whale flesh. Finally the coyote breaks it.

...What's a seal?" The word conjures images of something big, weighty. Round, maybe, and long-legged. One ear flicks, a string of saliva hanging from it, and Häti (almost frantically) bats at it with her foot. Gross. She makes her displeasure known with a sharp exhale.