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

Whether it was fate or the will of a strongly attached author, Firefly woke up on the beach to the sharp stinging of his well salted wounds. Was it the salt? Was it the administrations of attempted healing by the stranger? Whatever it was woke him with a start.

He felt like he had been put through a blender and spat out again. A man thrown through the spin cycle of a too-small washing machine. His fur hung off him in dregs and his appendages were snared by soggy green weeds - or in one case, a leg wrapped with red alien flora. As the water sloshed, lashing at him, the red growth shimmied in the current.

Firefly raised his head and gagged, retching water and detritus from his throat.