Sea Lion Shores because I could not stop for death

In the late hours of the witching hour, or perhaps early if you looked at it from a certain point of view, the ocean wept and thrashed, it’s moonlit eyes teary and wild. In its thrashing bloodied seas, a gift was rolling, curling, smashing inside.

With the moon’s silent, weary judgement, the seas threw its cargo ashore, then retreated from it, as though the gift came coated with arsenic. The crude, dripping figure lay winded and dazed, seawater drooling between his lips, eyes held wide open, stinging from salt.

Then, up!

Up it lurched!

Wrung forward, curving like a possessed thing, hacking and coughing and spitting until seawater joined bile on the sand.

Pelagius stared at the mess he had made, then over his shoulder. Aching, aching, he stood, slowly stumbling over to the deer skull half buried in the sand. He yanked it free with some effort, half drowned was he, before he cast his gaze across the beach.

This was not his island. This was not his home. Pelagius was very, very far away.