I wrote this as a background and description for one of my Wildsea characters.
Whis doesn’t remember where he was when it happened.
He remembers bits and pieces. The click of his boots against the ridge of the rocky spit. The burn against his fingers as he pulled back the bow string. The weight of the bending wood. The slow, intentional, steadying breaths. The decisive thwip of the arrow as it flew through the air.
He remembers the moment he turned and saw the other pinwolf that had been flanking the hunting party undetected this whole time.
He remembers it hurt, the sharp pain of talon into flesh, the shock at the sudden appearance of so much blood. Hazy vision. A tumble into the abyss below. His thoughts muddling into nonsense, like the liminal moments before you fall asleep. Then, a sudden, clear realization of what was happening.
And he remembers being just as surprised when he startled awake in the damp cleft of rock in a spit archipelago somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.
The Wildsea had taken him, and the Wildsea had spit him out again.
Whis fumbled around for several days learning how to live in a body again. His survival skills sustained him as he foraged small plants and animals. The familiarity of his gear against his rough hands anchored his focus to the physical world.
Finally he made it to a little village. He stumbled in to have a real drink and sleep in a real bed again. Nearly scared everyone there when he walked into the tavern. His dusty faded blue skin looked unnaturally washed out for a ketra. The edges of his clothing and frame lacked just a bit of definition, as if they were fading off into a haze. And if you looked closely, even his bones were a bit translucent.
A wisp of a man, one drunk wildsailor had mockingly said. And the name stuck.
He eked out a living hunting across the archipelago until a chance meeting with one Captain Martell, who had decided to strike out on his own and was building a crew.
Everyone at the little inn had thought of Whis as otherworldly and separate. But Martell had seen something different–a connection to the dark and wild places of this world, perhaps more real and more physical than those whose souls remained here naturally.