Kicking Up Seaspray

There were few things more therapeutic than the seashore to Arayne. The waves, the wind, the absolute freedom she felt standing on the shore, it all helped to wash away her bad mood and replace it with giddiness. She galloped across the sand, pushing herself to go faster, loving the sound of the wind whistling her head ears. Leaping a large, twisted piece of driftwood, she skidded to a stop, throwing up chunks of sand. Tongue lolling and eyes bright, she looked about the beach and spotted a flock of seagulls. With a childlike grin, she charged through the flock, sending birds up into the air with a flurry of scolding squawks. One feather drifted down, and she made a spectacular leap to catch it midair, shaking it about before releasing it again to let it drift to the ground.

Finally exhausted, she loped to the water's edge and began searching for seashells and shark's teeth. Minnows darted away from her paws, continually dragged along by the waves rolling in and out. A large mass loomed in front of her, and she went forward to investigate, finding the smooth, bare, bleached bones of a long-decomposed beached wall. She had seen a whale once, but only it's back from a far distance as it breached, and to her the bones might have well been from a monster. She sat in the giant cavern that had once housed a gut, and tilted her head. "Echo!" she called, then laughed as her voice rebounded off the bones. "Echo!" she shouted again, listening to the phantom voice repeating her words.