Sea Lion Shores some farcical aquatic ceremony

A heavy, moody rain was falling as the morning ebbed in to midday. Thick waves of fog rolled off the sea like an ungainly blanket only to clump like cotton through the nearest trees. The far-off island (the one named for the pesky, greedy, rats-with-wings that currently soared overhead) was heavily obscured due to the incliment weather.

It was only a spring storm. Yet on the heels of this erratic blustering of the weather, laying like a bundled heap of forgotten detritus spewed forth by the sea, or perhaps merely forgotten by the wayside by some other means, there was a man. His fur was thoroughly saturated in a way that exacerbated the vivacity of his pelt; the browns looked more brown, the reds more infernal, the gold -- well, okay, the flecks of gold throughout the scruff of his neck looked like messy sand, but the rest of him was bright, as things often became after a good dousing of water.

His extremities were crusted with bits of sand and salt, and the rest of him was netted in seaweed — but aside from looking like he'd been brought ashore only recently, he seemed to be in fine health. There was a rhythmic quality to his breathing (and, on that note, he was breathing - a miracle!), and when one of the inquisitive gulls perched itself upon the sand, one of his slicked ears lifted off of his soggy crown. It was a good sign.