i'll get high if i want to

Prior to her arrival, Muses had never seen a beach, let alone a body of water as expansive as the sea. Even from the grassy region before the black strip of beach, she could see the ocean, undulating waves crashing upon the shore, eternal and endless. It went on for so long that she thought it was impossible to cross, despite having arrived carried on an ocean current. Her mind turned over the possibilities of returning home, and although she had never been very happy to begin with, but it was all she had ever known. At the very least, she missed her full sisters, her litter mates, and her mother dearly. Even if they weren't all dead, she would never see them again; a realization that made her heart so heavy that by the time she had reached the beach, she had broken down into sobs.

It was unlike her to show such wanton sorrow a she fell to her knees, pressing her snout against the black sand to try and force the cries that tore through her chest to cease altogether. She did not want to cry. She did not want to feel sorrow. She did not want to feel fear. Yet all those things felt impossible to ignore when they weighed her down, heavier than any burden she had ever carried before. She felt as if her ribs would be wrenched apart, peeled back to expose her broken heart, so instead of crying, she screamed; a feral sound that caused the birds in the area to take flight, that echoed reds and browns as it persisted long after she finished.

The release was cathartic, however, and she could feel herself growing calmer by the second, until she made no more noise than a strangled sob once in a while, followed by a shaky gasp for air as she tried to regulate her breathing. Streaked with the black sand throughout her fur, and dusted with it across her muzzle, she finally managed to self-soothe, weary and trembling, nested in the warm granules of sand beneath her.