Many things washed up on our shore, but nothing scared you more than the kelp. It was brown and slimy, and as the sun set it to dry, it was salty to the taste, with a texture that set my fur on end. Worse yet, a strand caught around your paw, and you yowled like the world was going to end right then.
I had seen you flee before, and I had seen you with terror in your eyes, but to hear it rip from your throat? To know that your horror had a voice so thin and shrill and piercing? My heart shuddered, clutching at my ribs, filled with dread for what might come next. But there was nothing more once I freed you from the kelp's wet grasp. Nothing but heavy breaths and a keening that never quite made it from your chest.
I knew better than to ask. You were never inclined to answer. Instead, I led you from the shore, to the safety of our palm frond den, and there you slept the day away.
We went hungry that night, because I could not hunt, because you would not wake. You begged for your life in your sleep, and struggled as if bound and sinking into the sea. I thought it might have had something to do with your life before me, before us, but you wouldn't say.
You just asked me to clear the kelp in the morning while you went hunting, so I did.