He woke to a hazy world of black and white. The world moved beneath him, a sensation as familiar as land. But it was wrong, as well. He would barely feel his body, soaked in frigid water and stiff with salt. He remembered… a flash of a storm, the cry of hurrying wolves. His brothers… he tried to sit up, to look about him. But it hurt so much. All he managed was a slight lift of his head and then it fell back to the board that sheltered him.
Shipwrecked He remembered it now, the furious battle for his life, floating in the vastness of the sea. Waiting for death to take him, but just a little too stubborn to help it along. He licked his cracked lips, but his throat was so dry he felt everything sticking together. He swallowed once, painfully. All he could taste was salt and blood.
Why hadn’t the ocean taken him yet? He knew they were far from land, in uncharted territory. There was nothing else for him here. It would be so easy to just… let go. To slide off the board, and find his brothers along the rocky ocean floor. He blinked slowly, finding the temptation in the idea, but realising his body was so stiff he wasn’t sure he could manage even that much.
A flash of colour amongst the dark stormy sea, vivid and bright. The more colourful a thing was, the more deadly. A poisonous octopus, come to wrap it him in its meany arms? At least the blue ringed would be a quick death. Quicker than this slow waste-away as the salt and sun leached all life from him. He reached out a paw slowly to the colourful death, and smiled in the face of it. “Beautiful” He whispered on cracked lips.
