Ripped Apart!

until finally Grott like

It was the jittering of the mirelurks that drew his interest.

A soft haze filled the harbor, stretching along empty coast and flotsam-strewn beachfront as a salt heavy wind pushed in a lazy morning fog. The air bit cold and wet against the deathclaws’ lungs, eliciting an irritable snort.

But the cold did not drag down his seemingly reptilian bulk, though a shiver here and there gave away that the animal did not enjoy such temperatures as he patrolled the beach. A routine clamor of gulls filled the air and Grott snapped his jaws instinctively on phantom birds, though memory told him such morsels were little worth and too much trouble. 

Were it not for the potential bounty of the sea, Grott might have listened to his sleep-laden muscles and curled up beneath a stray piece of sheet metal, bound to grow nice and hot as the morning sun rose. But the storm that raged the night prior meant the promise of a rich and rare treat, wordless images of beached things that held no name to the beast playing out in his mind.

He padded on with a slow growing hunger, and continued in such a manner until the sun blazed between terce and sext and the fog long since disbanded.

A clamor drew his hungry gaze, dispelling a mounting doubt that gnawed at him as the hunger did his core --- an all-too familiar chittering hastening his stride and lowering his posture until he crept on all fours upon the jagged tidal rocks from beyond which the commotion came. A tongue flick, two, and without line of sight Grott knew what lay beyond.

Mirelurks. The number of which he knew not but from their ruckus excited by something. A great splashing coupled the noise that any predator would recognize as distress, bringing hunger above caution as he rose to full height.

The fight was a short one. 

For all their armor the small cast of scavengers fell beneath savage strikes that found purchase in their chinks, tearing shell from meat or otherwise slicing exposed bellies. Gull-cry increased threefold at this new prospect of meat and Grott was content to leave the dead for the winged scavengers.

It was the thrashing sea-beast beyond, twisting in death throes and churning the surf red with its wounds that held his eye. Such a meal would last him a week or more with its nutritious blubber and salt-heavy meat; exactly the prize he’d waited the morning for.

Evening-tide found the carcass stripped and submerged, small sea-things clamoring about the bounty in a race against time until the waters forced them back down. Sated, Grott rested above the swell, sunning upon the sun soaked rocks and watching the sea.

With his basal needs met he afforded himself a luxury; watching wave ebb and flow, crash upon the rocks to filter as foam back to their home. Wordless wonder was borne of this, with the rich taste of blubber still coating his tongue. What else lay beneath? In this domain, the one place he knew could never be his. 

It was a desert to his eyes, a liquid waste, but he knew that a lie. The sea beast itself was proof enough, and beneath the glare he saw the flicker and flash of the small fish that darted in the tidal pools. It frightened and appealed to the creature all in one rush as a wanting moan rumbled deep in his throat.

Would he be just as lost as his meal was? Adrift in a foreign kingdom, helpless to its kings as it was to he? Surely he could swim well as any creature but the trials of a pond or lake could not compare to this endless deep. 

Yet despite this danger, despite this unknown Grott could not help but to allow his mind to wander and slip into dreams of great beasts in the expanse and of the lands that may lay beyond.