Wheeling Gull Isle I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing.

@Strand / phone post.

 It is too bad he has survived the fall after everything he went through to reach that bay and take it for himself, but there was some sort of cosmic scale at work, a balancing act of which he had no control over. The madness which plagued him has gone - purged by the sea - and he is left as a shell of his former self. A mess upon the shore, leaking blood from his hocks and barely breathing. He sits where he has been deposited for some time; hours maybe, hours of being pushed by the constant pulse of the sea, slowly wedged to freedom.

His body is a slick black oil patch snared by algae and netted in seaweed. A typical survivor on the shore. The man is asleep. The way his body has caught upon the beach gives it a strange shape because his figure is easily discernable beneath the soaking pelt; there is no light left to him. His scars are knots across his body and without the blackness to hide them they are ugly, twisted things. The sea has revealed his truth - should he ever wake, it would be a surprise to learn how deep his blackness goes.

Overhead the gulls have begun to take notice of this new addition to their coastline. They bray, careening on hot vents of air, circling like curious vultures. One finally dives at one of the discarded logs beached on the shore and after a scramble of webbed feet on wet wood, it settles on its perch and turns its head, observing the lump for a few moments before hopping over to it. The pressure of a body atop him makes the slumbering beast sigh and shift, and the bird streaks away.