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.

Strand was patrolling her island, something she had taken to doing frequently since returning here with Padma. A very changed Padma. She was worried about her friend and didn’t know what to do about it. Being sentimental wasn’t really part of Strand’s makeup, so instead of talking to Padma, which would make the most sense to any normal wolf, she just exercised her confusion away. So, yeah. She’d been doing a lot of patrols lately. Mostly this meant she walked around the perimeter of the island once or twice a day, slowly or quickly depending on how she felt. Sometimes she went slowly if she was thinking a lot or if her shoulder was hurting. Sometimes she ran if she wanted to stop thinking entirely. Today she was walking slowly and sweeping her head from side to side to take in the beach.

That was when she saw the black figure on the sand. Seagulls circled overhead. A flashback of her own awakening on this beach went through her mind as quickly as blinking, and before she could think, she was running. Running with a limp, but still running. Were they dead or had they been lucky like her? If they were dead she wasn’t sure what she would do. What could she do but bury the body to prevent the seagulls from eating it? She reached the dark figure and nudged it, praying for a response. Then she sat back in relief as she heard the sighs of breath coming from the wolf. After catching her breath, she leaned over the figure again to check for wounds. She didn’t know all that much about healing, but if he had any cuts or scrapes, she at least knew how to stop the bleeding.

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.

Strand pulled her head back as the male gagged and vomited water. She had done the same when she had washed up on this island for the first time. It was good that he’d done it. It meant he’d cleared his lungs. Hopefully he wouldn’t suffocate now. She didn’t try to speak to him, unsure of what she could possibly say that would comfort him, or even if he would understand her. Instead she went about pulling all of the seaweed and whatever else off of him and simultaneously continuing to check for wounds. She didn’t find anything that stood out to her. He mostly just seemed battered. 

She sat back again and let him get his bearings. She was being uncommonly motherly and wondered at it for a moment while she sat there. Then she pushed the thought from her mind and asked the male, “Do you know your name?”