Mæva was almost grateful when the clouds finally covered the sun. The highly reflective obsidian beach was beautiful but in the noon day sun it was nearly blinding. She settled down on the beach and carefully set he rabbit between her paws. No sign of gulls or any other nuisances yet and the stones were reasonably warm. She wanted to work on getting her prey skinned and the meat drying. Well, a few of the pieces anyway. She fully intended to consume the guts. Mæva worked her jaws around the neck of the rabbit then down the center until she had the hide pulled mostly clean from the rabbit. It was still pretty rough, clearly she needed more practice but once tanned she'd have a nice skin to rest her head on.

With the meat exposed Mæva examined the rabbit for a moment and decided to pull some of the meat off the belly. She carefully worked her fangs under a piece and worked her jaws down to create a strip of flesh that was mostly the same thickness. Well, if you squinted. Something else that would take practice! She laid the piece of meat next to her on the rocky sands to dry. The sand hear was much larger than the finer sand beach of the north but she knew some of it was still probably going to stick. Maybe she could scrape it off?

The scent of winter clung to the land, reminding the creatures of the world that preparations had to be made. Resin had been in search of seal or walrus on the beach so that they could have a store of fat for candles, salves and other things. The meat would be good to have as well. Their stores were decent, but it was Resin's intent to make sure that they were more than decent.

Sunlight warmed the sand below her paws and the light glinted off of the ebony rock particles. Squinting against the sun, she thought that she saw a moving form farther down the beach. Ducking her head, she moved forward towards it. Only when the clouds blocked out the glaring sun did she realize that it wasn't a seal, but a wolf laying in the sand. With a slight huff of annoyance, the scarred woman shifted out of hunt mode and approached the girl. She was plucking the meat from a rabbit. It was good that she could feed herself. "Greetings, child," the woman offered up in her growling tones.

Mæva pulled back the skin of the rabbit further from the center seam, pulling on both sides as far as she could before the legs started to get in the way. She wasn't entirely sure what to do about those. She wasn't skilled enough with her fangs to cut. Should she maybe just chew the legs off and try peeling the flesh back from that point?

While Mæva debated what to do on that front carefully took strips of meat from other sections of the rabbits belly as well, not just from the middle. She tried some from higher up, wondering if the fat content in the meat made a different to how it dried. Only one way to find out. She took the strips and laid them down next to the first.

At that moment she looked up and saw someone heading towards her. It was an older woman who looked like she'd seen quite a few things in her years. Mæva dipped her head in greeting. "Hi there." She glanced at her rabbit then back at the woman. "Are you hungry? I can share some of my rabbit. I was hoping to skin it but I don't know what to do about the legs." She reached out a paw toward the strips of meat. "I'm also trying to dry some of the meat for travel snacks." If the woman was interested Mæva was more than happy to share some of the beach, there was certainly plenty of it!

Ears perked as the child spoke of skinning the rabbit. Resin watched as she peeled meat from the small creature and placed it in the sand. The brow above her missing eye arched slightly. Haunches folded and she sat beside the girl and her kill. There seemed to be some issue in the younglings mind about the legs of the rabbit. Extending one foreleg, Resin drew a line around each leg with the claw of one paw. "Generally you don't keep the legs on your skin when it comes to rabbit. They just dangle and get in the way. Better to cut them off. There's not much skin on them anyway." She gave a light shrug. "Or you could try to lightly bite around each ankle and I could show you a trick."

Resin then motioned to the meat laying on the sand. "As for the meat, it's best to hang it. Then it dries from both sides equally and you don't have to worry about flipping it." Black backed ears flicked forward. "You should meet my daughter. She dries meat often. And she flavors it too, although I don't know how she manages that." The things that Iolaire did were a wonder to her.

Mæva took a few more strips of meat from the rabbit as the woman moved to sit near to her. She'd pulled the fur back far enough to get some of the meat from the side, just behind the elbow and she laid it down to the other strips. She laid them in a specific order so that she could remember which pieces came from which side.

The woman mentioned that the legs weren't usually kept on the skin and Mæva nodded. That made sense to her though she was curious about this trick. "Let's compare! I'll chew the back legs off and you can show me the trick on the front legs. My name is Mæva by the way." She bent down and started chewing on the back legs. Her powerful fangs crunched through bone but it took a bit of effort. Finally, she chewed through both legs. She then moved to the front legs and worked to bite lightly around the skin of each ankle.

As she worked she thought about the woman's suggestion to hang the meat. "How do you hang it? Do you have to do something to keep the birds away?" She'd be curious to meet this woman's daughter if she had so much practice drying meat. Mæva was still just trying to figure out the basics.

With the skin around the neck separated from the rest of the body and with Maeva having chewed through the fur around the front wrists of the rabbit, the next task would be easy. Rabbits were the easiest creature to skin in her opinion. Taking the rabbit between her paws, the woman gently took the pelt up by the neck between her teeth. Hold on with both paws, she pulled her head back and the rabbit practically slid from its skin. Since Maeva had removed the kind legs, it took mere seconds to strip the skin from the body and it was all in one piece. She flipped the skin so that the bloody side faced upwards and then placed the naked rabbit back upon it. "If you practice often, you can have a whole clutch of rabbits skinned in a matter of minutes."

Maeva asked about how Iolaire dried the meat and Resin tilted her head to the side slightly, "Some she hangs off of thorned vines near her home. Other types of meat she dries on rocks beside a fire. I'm not sure whether or not she has issues with birds."

Resin took the rabbit between her paws and Mæva scooted closer to get a better look at what the woman was doing. She watched with fascination as Resin grabbed the rabbit skin by the neck and using her paws, held the body still. With a sharp tug of her head backwards she peeled the rabbit skin right off the creature and laid it fur-side down.

"Whoa, you're really good at this." Mæva had to work section by section as she still hadn't quite figured that part out. She listened as Resin mentioned that her daughter dried meat near a fire or in areas with thorns. "That's a good idea!" She didn't know how to make fire but her lemur companion did, if he ever caught up with her.

"Thank you so much for your help!"