Stormwader
Berinu Islands storm grazer
The Stormwader is the largest land animal of the Berinu Islands, a heavy amphibious grazer of the reef flats and deltas of the wild outer islands. It senses cyclones well before they arrive and moves to high ground ahead of them, and islanders have read its movements as a storm warning for as long as people have lived on the archipelago.
Its body is broad and low for its height, with thick folded hide, wide splayed feet for soft ground, and a long neck it uses to crop seagrass and algae in water several meters deep. When grazing runs short it swims between islands.
Herds of six to twenty are calm and tolerate boats and observers at a distance. A herd moving ahead of a storm is another matter: it travels in a straight line and goes through whatever stands in its way.
It is among the massive fauna that made the Islands a host of the Yuvaar Hunting Games, and the outer islands it occupies are kept clear of settlement.
