Wheeling Gull Isle my fondest memory is getting stabbed with a variety of knives. (mtr.)

He melted away in to the sand as if he were built of it himself, dry and brittle, swept by the beating tide of the man's pace until the end and he lay bare upon the beach. He felt the lightest touch of the crow as he tended to him but it was like wading through shallows; he felt the weight of it but there was a drifting, light fashion to it. Like it was happening to someone else and he just happened to be present to witness it. The trembling of Firefly's flesh had ceased, turned cold. His lust was spent and he was filled with an emptiness now and that, in time, would turn in to revulsion, to horror, as he came to terms with what had transpired.

The man should not have been so resistant to the concept of homosexuality — and Firefly certainly knew that such a thing was possible, that it existed in the world — but it didn't apply to him. This beast of a man who had taken woman after woman, fathered children, lusted for the feeling that a woman could give him. This entire event was not right. It couldn't be Firefly that had lusted after the pale man; it must have been a trick, some kind of subterfuge designed by the Dragedan. This was not his own doing. He had not wanted this. He — he couldn't have wanted this.

How are your legs? Murmured the poltergeist — to which Firefly could not respond, the aftermath of what had transpired was still working through him and his mind was reeling; his body felt unclean. After a minute or two he rolled away from the man and left a patch of compressed sand where he had been laying, worked up to a small ridge as he pushed off the dirt and tried to stand, take a step away — only to falter as he had faltered in the beginning, and Firefly had a frightful thought that it would happen again — I'm fine, he rasped, and with another step he kicked a clod of wet sand back against the man's pale face.

His mind was blank, save for the repetitive sound-memory of Vonnaruil's husky breathing, and a growing sense of dread twisting his gut. What did this mean, he thought. What does this make me?