It felt like she'd been asleep forever, although it had only been one and a half days. When she finally came to, draped over the floor of the hotel room like a used towel, every muscle felt numb and shaky from the long rest. She had no idea how near her limits she'd pushed herself over the past few weeks, walking without rest, and considered as she stretched her way into wakefulness that perhaps this was for the best. No need to trouble herself with such morbid facts. She was still alive, and she would be all the stronger for her exertions. Her legs were twitching, demanding exercise after the relatively everlasting amount of time spent motionless. Four walls could not contain a habit of roaming under endless sky, and Caspa found herself almost on auto-pilot as she hurried down the stairs and out of the gate, keenly aware she was so very stiff that until she'd warmed up a little she wouldn't be able to face going back upstairs, or even up a slope at all. Forced to stick to the downhills, the mutt found herself skirting various human settlements; the hotel was by no means a lone development. It was all mysterious to her, the odd square crumbling designs, the cracked roads. Mostly it seemed that the determined undergrowth was taking over.
Her sore muscles twinged every time she had to move upwards or across the land's slope, so she kept going, knowing that this journey could have only one outcome and indeed before the sun was even higher than eye level to the horizon Caspa found herself tasting sea salt on the lively breeze. Everything seemed a little surreal, after all she was half-starved, half asleep and more than half in shock from how suddenly her new home had happened upon her. Seeing the ocean for the first time was almost unexceptional compared to all the other surprising turns her life had taken, but she still took a few moments to let the sight sink in, even though it was still only a faint pale blue shimmer in the distance. When she was near enough to hear it and see the white foam, she was simultaneously bemused and fascinated. She didn't want to go too near such a massive, heaving entity so skirted the beach, staying where grass grew, following the jagged curve of the coast because she still didn't feel her aching legs could stand the climb back inland, although they were gradually loosening up and her stride was becoming more like its usual swift efficiency. Her ancestors' land lay somewhere over that water, she remembered vaguely, not looking at it but listening to the slow rhythm of the rushing waves. She passed the territory border eventually, pleasantly surprised at how long it took. This land was expansive, compared to her birthplace. She finally threw a glance at the ocean, then turned inland despite still-feeble limbs, taking the first few steps towards learning the boundaries of the place by tracing its path through the low-rolling hills and occasional sprouting woodland.
