Early morning, 4th. Neela has landed roughly halfway between CdA and CdC, just north of Wolfville.
Word Count → 494
Neela's entire body ached. A dull throb that seemed to originate from her temples and then spread down into her limbs, leaving them feel like dull lead weights attached to her torso. A horrible dry feeling in her mouth didn't help things earlier, the sensation was similar to sand; in fact Neela could practically feel the grains in her mouth.
Wait a minute. Neela could feel grains of sand in her mouth because they were there! The collie was firmly implanted in a beach with her muzzle jammed almost up to her eyes in loose, fine sand. Neela lifted her head out of the sand and shook it, groaning and whimpering as the pain in her head flared up. Forcing herself to move Neela opened her eyes, trying to puzzle out where the hell she was; a long sniff revealed that she was still somewhere in Nova Scotia but it wasn't a part of the peninsula that she remembered.
Off to her left the Meria was firmly entrenched in the sand in such a way that Neela let out a despairing groan the instant she saw it; it would take an age and a half to get the heavy boat unstuck by herself. Along with Neela various items and bits of wood were scattered around, including the remains of a barrel which had hit a rock uncomfortably close to Neela's right side, shattering in a spray of wood fragments. Perched on the rock, just above the fragments, were Marahute, Oonu and Skylar; the three chicks staring at her with an uncharacteristic and eerie silence. Grynn was nowhere to be found but if the scene was anywhere near as bad as it seemed like she was likely looking for help.
Neela spent a few seconds staring around at the devastation dumbly until suddenly, the events of the previous night came rushing back to her. Neela had been somewhat drunkenly sailing along, sticking to the coast rather than trust her impaired judgement with open sea, when rough waters had struck suddenly; a storm of some sort Neela guessed. Unable to control the boat Neela had banked in to land but the whiskey in her system had made her misjudge and come into land much harder than she intended.
Thankfully the sand was soft enough that little damage, if any, had been done to the Meria but the impact had been jarring and all unsecured objects on deck, Neela herself included, had been thrown about and in many cases, once again including herself, thrown off the ship and onto the beach.
That explained the ache in her body then. In the back of her mind Nela knew that she should be doing something, gathering her bearings and belongings and getting moving again but she just couldn't bring herself to move. Instead she laid her head back down on the soft sand, this time with muzzle running along it and not into it, and went back to sleep.
