The male lingered close to the cliffs, stopping once and a while to pick up a stone that looked particularly interesting. After he had inspected a few, he spotted one that astonished him. Squatting to get a better look at it, he ran a thumb along the smooth lines of an imprint that looked remarkably like a seashell. His eye traced the contours of the four slightly smaller imprints on the same jagged piece of rock, and after a few awestruck moments he let himself fall onto his bottom, crossing his legs. Hemming leaned forward to get a better look, his amber eyes only a few inches away from the specimen that still laid on the ground. The explorer had a feeling that he had found only a small piece of the wonder that these rocks held, and wished he had come here sooner.

The gray wolf didn't notice the other until his paws appeared in his peripheral vision, a few feet off to his side. He looked up, a smile tugging gently at the corners of his lips. The other's question pleased Hemming, for he always liked to share the little things that brought him joy. Holding the fossil with two hands, he turned his body around to face the other squarely and put the object down between them. "Take a look," he said, excitement evident in his voice, "I think it's a fossil... These creatures must have been buried in this sand, which must have then compacted and trapped them for... millions of years." There was a slight inflection in his voice at the end, betraying his uncertainty. Hemming ran a finger along an edge once more, absolutely fascinated by this little discovery.

After a few more moments of admiring the finely defined sworls, Hemming said softly, "I wonder what kind of creatures they lived with. Giant fish, maybe? I wonder if they're squashed in the rocks, as well." He looked towards the caves at their side, fantasizing about what sorts of fossils might be hidden in there, like the finest treasure. The bookworm vaguely remembered reading that certain types of tissues fossilized differently or not at all. Conditions had to be just right, as well, but the presence of the fossil that laid before them suggested that the odds were good.

He felt as if he had opened up a secret world, where the past had folded over to relapse upon the present. How many of these secret worlds existed here on Earth? Sometimes Hemming was worried that he would die before he could find them all. Worries like that, though, were far from his mind on this splendid day.

It was possible that there was some way to tell if a patch of rock would be a good place to find fossils, but beyond knowing to look for sedimentary rock for the best of luck, Hemming did not possess that skill. Likely, it was down to good fortune, and the wolf chose a patch of the cliff that looked particularly crumbly to inspect. Peering at the ground as he walked slowly and carefully, he kept an eye out for any bits of rock that reflected light in an odd way.

He was squatted down, his fingers running across stones as he picked them up, when his fellow fossil hunter called to him. It was more the excitement that dripped out of his voice than the actual words that he was saying that forced Hemming up onto his feet. He made his way over quickly, squatting beside Kansas and peering at the little treasure he had found. This creature had long, spindly legs that extended from a central core. Hemming could barely form any words, and for a few moments he only stared, his eyes likely wider than they had ever been.

Finally, he sputtered, "It's beautiful," and still failed to remove his gaze from it. In his mind he pictured a world where little shelled creatures roamed across the bottom of an ocean while large spiders skirted upon its surface. He had no clue if the two fossils would have come from creatures living in the same time period, and even wasn't sure how one might find out. His thoughts raced by too quickly to make any comprehensible words out of them, so his lips remained shut as he revelled in another tiny piece of history.

Hemming was beginning to appreciate that he was sharing a spot in time and space with this wolf, too, someone that could be so awestruck by these ancient imprints. He grinned as he continued to stare at the fossil, letting the things that Kansas was saying drift through his mind. "Neither have I," he replied at length, trying to imagine how old it was. Millions of years, billions of years? The immense timescale of life dwarfed the little blips in time that the two wolves occupied. The atoms that made their bodies had spent virtually infinitely more time in other creatures than it did in them. Hemming was almost unable to comprehend it, though he had read it in books, and his mind swam with profound questions. Even something that one knew and held to be true could be almost unimaginable when actually analyzed. Perhaps they were breathing some of the carbon that had been integrated into this strange spider thing's skeleton, whatever form that skeleton might have taken.

"This place is a treasure trove," Hemming whispered, "There must be so many more..." He turned his attention to the rocks that remained unturned and took a small step to the side before flipping some of them. Maybe the fossils would be clustered, and there would be more spider things nearby. And, maybe they would give some more clues as to what exactly the strange creature was.

"I didn't really think so, either," he replied, looking up for a moment as the white wolf marked the spot where his fossil sat. His eyes strayed to the sheer hills, where there were surely more fossils hidden than what was laid out before them. Kansas enquired about a book, and Hemming felt a tinge of regret that he hadn't brought one of his books on natural history with him. Really, though, it was for the better - he had lost the few books he had brought on his trip into the Atlantic. He ceased his rock flipping. "I left my books when I came here, from far away... but they were just collected from human libraries and such around where I lived. I'm sure that Halifax has good libraries, but I've never been there."

For a moment he just stared into the air, thinking about what gold mines the libraries in a big city would be. He had lived closer to smaller towns, and they usually just had one medium-sized library. Even those were full of wonders, and perhaps the comparison of the smaller libraries to a great one in Halifax would be similar to that of the shore and the cliffs that surrounded the two wolves now.

He would take the fossil he had found home with him, even though he felt he was robbing the place of a little bit of its history. The wolf would need it for further investigation, though, to compare to whatever books they would find. Maybe they would even be able to their exact creatures within the pages of information, learn the ways they had lived and when they had lived. The idea took root, and Hemming's fervent grin spread even wider as he absentmindedly turned stones.