It is just past midnight on the beach: the fourth hour of watch for the dark buck, and the way he prefers it. Flint's dark coloring allows him to blend in with the blue-black sea and the grey-black sand. If anyone approaches, the only thing they will see are his pale eyes and perhaps the glowing blue markings around his forelegs, the exact blue of the odd phosphorescent jellyfish the surf sometimes throws up. Having been stung by one of them before, not knowing what, exactly, the weird creatures were, Flint knows to stay far away from them, and fancies that his blue markings give off the same effect: stay far away from me. With the rest of his tribe sleeping, he is free to do exactly as he wishes, as long as he stays on the beach.
Aside from the dull sound of the surf pounding the beach, a sound so commonplace that Flint barely registers it, there is one other sound: a sudden crackling, and then a brittle tearing. Having caught a crab that blundered onto the shoreline, Flint now makes short work of it, ripping its legs off with his teeth. After that it's simple to crack the shell and suck out the sweet, moist flesh.
