The Sea-Dog, called the Coten, or {w-nh-uh} by the mermen, is the size of a bear or larger. It has hair as long as a man is tall, white, but with a slight, icy blue hue. When fishes touch this hair they are tangled and paralyzed, and the dog combs them out with long hooked claws, and eats them. It never eats men. Some people gradually inure themselves to the sting and bathe in the hair. The Coten's eyes, and the skin around them, are gleaming red.

They live alone with their mate, and mate for life. They give birth on shore and leave their young to themselves. These hunt small creatures on shore, and then swim out to sea and grow their long hair. While their hair is short it still gives the young ones some protection by giving a strong sting when touched.

Throughout their lives they make little or no sound. They have no scent. They willingly allow people to bathe in their hair, unless they are hungry and the person scares away their food. They can be kept in and fed very easily.

I have other threads about this creature here:
http://www.holyworlds.org/fantasy/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=3832
And here:
http://www.holyworlds.org/scifi/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=982

Like it!

No scent? How is this possible?

Thank you for posting! You are the first one to post, and the first one to ask about this.

I do not know very much about how scent works, but I was thinking of the comparison of some things which obviously have a strong smell, and things like rocks, which are often very hard to smell. With the Coten I was thinking of an extrapolation of that from little smell to no smell.

I could also explain it as one of those phenomena of nature which we have not yet discovered the explanation for; of course this would not satisfy any one artistically, but we have to prioritize.

Sorry if this is an unnecessarily long answer, I am on a break during Nanowrimo, and my verbosity is heavily stimulated.

Whoa. That's some extensive vocabulary. I'm throughly impressed!

*Getting back on topic* Scent is easily built up by sweat and other 'excretions' of the body so the sea-dog must be really into grooming but it poses one problem. If it cleans itself by any means like other animals, a cat for instance, then it will then have the aroma of it's saliva, although it no longer smells like whatever got caught in it's fur. Therefore, the only solution is for it to rub itself with something that can disguise it's scent, like sterilizing with salt or anything of nature, even old fish if that helps.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia about sweating:
Although sweating is found in a wide variety of mammals, relatively few, such as humans and horses, produce large amounts of sweat in order to cool down.

I begin to think that its near odorlessness is caused by the kind of hair it has.

Off of my Nanowrimo break, hence my brevity.

These are really neat.
One question why would one want to bathe in its hair? Is it good for the skin or something?

*grins* I wasn't the only one, Tsahraf.

*grins back* You were for twelve days.


It is very hard to get used to, but many people do it. Many sea people anyway.

Ok.

(Sounds like something I would do...)

That's a very neat creature, Tsahraf. It sounds awesome. *Make note to check out other threads sometime*

The Sea-Dog sounds interesting. I keep envisioning a big fluffy white dog, though... I don't think that's accurate.

I dare you to pronounce that.

Haha, I don't think I'll try...

Sorry I am so late: busy, not much time on the computer, trouble with the recording. I know it sounds fishy (pun intended), but I was able to pronounce wnhuh when I first typed it (that is to say, when I first typed that word, it was ''nhuh when I first typed it).

Since mermen use different sounds than English speakers, and therefore there is no phonetic code for representing the sounds they use, I made one up using English characters (sorry). When I typed the word I used this code. Then I forgot how to pronounce it. I ran to get the sheet out of my
*pales, faints, revives*
folders.
I found it in the folder I thought it was in.
*screams in horror*
Then realized "w" was not in the code.
What had happened was this: the first orthography, as I said, was ''nhuh. But some editor came along and kindly put the word in quotes (thank you, really), so I had to come up with an unambiguous spelling on the spot, which was not already used in the code. So I used "w," and forgot to note it in the code.
*slaps forehead*

I am going to put mermanish phonetic representations in curly brackets to identify them, and separate the sounds, like this {w-nh-uh}.

This is the pronunciation, said three times, with mouth shut and nose pinched, of course:

There!

That... is not how I would have pronounced that, but okay.