As she walked the cool ocean breeze wrapped her face and
body in its blanket of moist freshness. The water-pocked sand beneath
her felt cold and invigorating. Tiny trills of foam nipped at her feet
as if demanding her attention, before returning in hissing protest to
the sea.
At long last, she thought, they had come to a place where this simple
pleasure, a walk in the open air, did not mean exposure to imminent
peril. High walls of stark, weather-beaten stone protected the cove
from behind and to either side, reaching long tendrils out into the
water. And between its arms and hollow chest a strip of sand, perhaps a
mile long and a third as deep, lay open to the sea and sun. Lack of
game, as much as the forbidding walls, kept the predatory threat of the
land animals away from them. So Kalus had told her.
For this same reason he had never considered the margins of the sea as a
home of any duration. But on that night when he felt its call so
strongly, remaining upon the high watch until the fiery sun had risen
from its depths to light the land, Sylviana had spoken of the many ways
that food could be obtained there. His restless thought needed no other
prompting. In the following weeks they had taken what they needed and
could carry, and come the gray stone distance to the north and east, to
live.
Pages:
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242