Did it never cross anyone else's mind but my own to wonder just why I was found in broken chains? In shackles,for the Naaru's sakes! Shackles that bit deeply into each wrist and ankle, clasped my throat like some hideous necklace, and no one ever thought to question this?

Why did you tend to me and my wounds without complaint, Tsun? Why did you watch me toss and turn for many nights, if you had no guarantees that I would wake to thank you for your kindnesses? Where did your compassion for me start?

Was it when you witnessed the portal open and spew me out into the sea, making a mockery of a shooting star, one that had the audacity to plummet in the daytime? Or was it when you said nothing as your people reported discovering a great white beast? I am sure they expected to haul in a great many fish that day, but certainly not one such as I.

I lay there drowning in my mouthfuls of salt-water on the shore, unconscious and battered, and yet you never spoke up against me, knowing what I was.

Did it start when they elected you, the biggest and the strongest of them, to carry me back to your quaint little village? I can only imagine what it must have looked like; a sorry sight, indeed, to think of a great race such as yours deigning to carry the half-dead flotsam of another world. I wonder if my tail dragged and left a jagged line to break up the complacent, even pattern of your heavy pawprints in the sand.

Perhaps. These are all possibilities. Anything in this world is possible, I have learned. Even death does not stop life anymore. I certainly did not stop! Someone wanted to be rid of me, and Oh, did they do a decent job. Stuck here in the middle of uncharted waters, sand and sea, sand and sea, as far as the eye could care to spy. Frustrating to recall a snatch of verse, and not know where it came from.