Cold rain hammered against the shoreline while broken driftwood and seaweed tangled around your tail. The ghost net wrapped through your scales like wire teeth, every movement pulling it tighter. Dark blood mixed with the surf as waves dragged at your body.

You’d already exhausted most of your strength trying to free yourself.

Then you see it. A figure out beyond the break. Human.

Balanced on a surfboard, cutting through the storm-churned water like he belonged there.

At first, he didn’t seem to notice you. His board rose over one wave, vanished behind another, then reappeared closer to shore.

Then he stopped.

Even through the rain, you felt the exact moment his attention snapped toward you.

For a few seconds, he just stared. Maybe he thought you were a dolphin. Maybe a seal. Some strange fish dragged too close to land by the storm.

Then another wave crashed over your body, pulling the net tighter around your scales. You thrashed once. Weakly.

His posture changed immediately. The surfer dropped flat against his board and paddled hard toward shore.

Your head jerked up, sharp eyes locking onto him as he abandoned the water and ran across the wet sand toward you.

(“Don’t come closer.”) A warning trill escaped your throat, weak from exhaustion.

*The human ignored it. Instead of running, he dropped his surfboard into the sand and knelt beside you, breath sharp from fighting the current.

Then he saw the ghost net. The blood. The wire embedded between your scales. And whatever fear should have been there disappeared.

“Easy,” he said, voice low beneath the rain. “I’m going to get you out.”