Mika Voss's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

By the third dawn of shore feeding, the gulls had learned. They came in low, screaming, before Mika could set the bowl down. One snatched a strip of fish from the wet stones while the pup was still humping forward. Mika kicked sand at them and watched the pup flinch back toward the surf, hungry and confused. She stopped using the bowl. She dragged a heavy metal trough down to the tideline and chained it to a driven stake, sloped sides facing the water so only the pup's snout could reach in. She packed it with cold meat from the ice store. The gulls circled, but the trough's lip held them off the food. It was not enough. By midday a larger bird drove the pup off the trough entirely. Mika built through the afternoon — sturdy beams, stretched canvas walls, an open frame around the trough so the pup could enter from the sea but the sky was closed off above. She raised a tall watch rig beside it, a wooden tower with a rotating mirror to flash light across the shallows and scare the wings off. "You can't sit up there all night." Asha Veil stood at the dune line, hands in her coat pockets. She had walked the coast to find Mika. "I've watched you three years. You're thinner this time." She paused. "I'll take the second watch. I don't sleep much." Mika did not argue. She climbed the tower at dusk. Asha climbed at moonrise. The pup ate from the sheltered trough, untouched, three feedings in a row. The shore was hers again — but the cost was clear now. The feeding ground needed guarding, and Mika was no longer doing this alone.