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The sand had cooled down quite a bit by the time the family reached the shoreline. The sun was no longer high in the sky and the air felt comfortable as she padded along through the dunes. The pups were out of sight, carried in a wicker basket that she carried on her back. The basket helped to shade them, but it also allowed a lot of air flow so that they could breathe alright while she carried them. Naniko had been considering taking them out of the den for a week or so now, and had finally decided that today would be the day for it.
As soon as she found a decent spot she put the basket down, reaching inside to pull the three whelps out. There wasn't much for greenery around this portion of the beach, but the cliffside left a nice shadow for them to sit in where the sand wouldn't be quite so hot and where they could escape the heat if they needed to. It wasn't bad outside, but she knew that pups were more sensitive to such things than adults were. To her it didn't feel too hot, but who knew how it felt to them. She planned on taking them over to one of the tide pools and cleaning it out for them to sit in and experience. Water that wasn't too deep for them, but that they could splash around in a bit if they wished to.
A quick meal for them and it was off to the water's edge. As soon as she stepped away from the bundle of squirming fuzzballs they began to tumble along after her, rolling and scooting around on the sand. They seemed perplexed by the new texture beneath their paws, used to the hard rocky surfaces of the caves or the softness of the furs that they slept on at night with Naniko. One pup, the lightest of the group, seemed to catch onto the idea of crawling on the sand more quickly than the others, though, and clumsily rolled and scooted after his mother as she headed toward one of the tide pools.