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"The forest we lived in was very old, it was inhabited long before our pride ever settled there," he explained, staring up the length of the bones that remained. Even with as many ribs as had been removed at this point the skeleton was still intimidating. But as he'd seen so far there were still quite a lot of beautiful things in the ocean that he hadn't seen yet. If all those beautiful things outnumbered the terrifying, well that worked out all the better. His train of thought wandered as he looked up and down the beach at all the lions that had come out to participate. This place was a family, it was that simple.

Had that been? He squinted against the sunlight glaring off the sands. That blue coat, it was so familiar. But then, blue and greens seemed common among those born near the sea. Perhaps it was wishful thinking.

Just as he thought he might approach anyway he stumbled over another slimy mermaid's purse, this one with the neonate visibly squirming within it. He cursed quietly, picking it up by its corner to throw back into the surf. "Any more bad luck and you might be right about these things Kicheko, they seem fond of me."

Kicheko gave a little hum as Rasul spoke, looking up at the ribs again. They were almost halfway there, and if dragging one wasn't so exhausting, she was sure she'd have pulled up three or four more by now. Still, two was nothing to sneeze at.

As Rasul and another lioness came across more mermaid's purses, she couldn't help but laugh. "Oh dear...why don't you two try on the other side of the rib cage? There's more over there to move and it's further from the sea, so maybe there's less bad luck waiting for you in the sand."

As she spoke she climbed through the whale's mouth, taking a short cut around the beast. She really did love the skull and wished it were smaller so they could use it to decorate the pride in some way. Maybe they could at least salvage the teeth.

Thuraya happily tucked the first sea shell that she found into a little pouch that she carried with her. She was happy with it and began to work finding another piece of bone, she was a little intimidated by the thought of trying to haul away a rib bone so instead she set at picking up some small pieces.

As she cleaned off another piece she found she had yet again managed to stumble upon a shell, smiling she picked it up and put it into her pouch, it was a bit smaller than the first one she had found. She smiled to herself, perhaps she would end up with a earrings and necklace set.

With a gasp of surprise Kawasemi felt her small body lose balance in the sand when the stranger--Catamaran, had he tried to tell her was his name?--nudged her. Luckily the warm, shifting earth was soft enough that her landing didn't hurt at all! Or at least it wouldn't have, if she hadn't landed on another one of those small bones, they really were littering the whole beach!

Startled though she might have initially been, she didn't think that Catamaran had meant to hurt her, though Strychnos didn't seem to agree. She could hear the anger in his voice and assumed he was addressing the ocean lion that had pushed her, though her attention was distracted by the very thing she had almost stepped on, had the concerned male not been there to stop her. It was a curiously shaped thing, amber in color and still slightly damp. Under the glare of the sun she could see movement through the slightly translucent skin and it dawned on the surprisingly intelligent lioness that it was an egg of some sort! An egg that--based on it's still damp texture--belonged in the water?

Strychnos rduf! I'n lud hisd! I dhailc aid'r eraiya! Wa heya du harf!(Strychnos stop! I'm not hurt! I think it's alive! We have to help!) Rolling upright with little effort Kawa decided to take matters into her own paws. If she waited for Strychnos and Catamaran to quit butting heads, she would have been waiting all day. Males could be so stubborn sometimes!

Careful with her teeth upon the peculiar pouch she hurriedly brought it to a small tidepool that seemed like a safe place for a lone egg to rest. At least there it was protected by a small wall of rocks that would hopefully keep the egg from winding up being pushed inland again.

A grey lion down the ways down the beach caught Thuraya eye. She studied him sure that it was one of her sons. Her heart fluttered. She knew that this son was a kind boy, though one who had never gotten along with his father. Thuraya knew that Kwea had been a hard pad, though never towards her. Her father would never have had that. She was lucky.

In her distraction she began to tug hard on a bone and it wasn't until she had given two or three good tugs on it that she realized that she was pulling on a rib bone. She shook her head pushing away the thought of her son, her pad and her former pride to concentrate on pulling the rib bone up to the dens, although she did make a note to seek the male out later when things were quieter. Once she got back to the beach she would keep an eye on him.

Thuraya rejoined the group huffing just a little it had been a long walk up to the dens dragging the rib bone. She came back down the beach happily though ready to scavenge some more.

She set herself up not far from where the male that she was now sure was her son was working. She wanted to be close to him but didn't actually want to talk to him yet. Here in a crowd wasn't the right place, but she wanted to keep an eye on him so she could find him when the time came.

As she scavenged away she found a little piece of bone, adding it to her pouch she wasn't sure how she would use it but she was sure that it may become useful in its own time.

Rasul laughed off her comment, then it sunk in. He didn't deal well with insinuations that he was lazy, even if they were joking. It was a rough life, that much he had known coming in to it, and he was nothing if not determined to hold his own.

"I don't want to be off the hook for anything," he added with a stern wag of his paw, "I signed on for this, I knew it would be hard work. We all have to do our part to improve this place for everyone that resides here, new or old."

He couldn't help but laugh as the lioness peered at him through the eye holes, it somehow made things seem less serious. No sense in not having fun with it. He pawed through the sand, looking to find where the nearest rib was rooted. Instead he found another vertebrae, this one one of the larger ones that connected to the skull.