He was lost at sea, and so she left home, rented a little sailboat, climbed into the cockpit, and shoved off in search of him.

She scoured the sea from one end to the other, parking on the sandy shore of every island she passed by to see if he had washed up there.

Finally she found him. He was struggling to do the backstroke through torrential waves that didn't exist. He was worse off than she had expected. The sandy shore of an island had washed up onto his stomach. It was covered with sun-dried jellyfish and spit-shined tortoise bones.

She cried out his name.

"Hello there!" he gurgled.

"I love you!" she replied.

A crab crawled out of the shore and snipped off his tongue with one of its pincers. Simultaneously a jellyfish corpse experienced a postmortem reflex and stung him. He choked, convulsed, and melted into the water.

She gripped her mouth with her fingers. Then she sailed home.

The shore spread across the surface of the sea ...