[you guys don’t have to match length <3 ]

he’d been gone so very very long - when he hadn’t wanted to leave even in the first place.

But death doesn’t grant one a choice on the matter.

He remembers how painful it had been - a botched transformation born of his genetics had rippped through his small fragile form, scales ripping through blood and muscle, bones attempting to shift and reform instead snapping in on themselves, perforating lungs and piercing fragile organs - a pervasive heat that had left him fever ridden and shaking for days and days until the very end when it burned enough to scour at his starving insides and finally his fragile near skeletal malnourished form had finally dragged itself out into the sands to fall still and silent, where his family wouldn’t witness the worst of it - only the aftermath (he wished he could’ve spared them even that, but he never did get a say in things)

It hasn’t been a nice way to die.

Death itself though was,,weightless if he could put a word to it - weightless and a constant haze of near awake and fully sleeping

Or maybe that’s just the state those that come back are stuck in and true death meant something else, but he wouldn’t know - he’d died barely out of his cub years after all.

He didn’t choose to be reborn either, it simply happened to him - as if something had decided that this one soul who died too young and too horribly deserved a second chance - and had the grace at least to let him keep his memories, for as bad as his last few weeks of life had been, he wouldn’t trade losing those memories for everything else.

When hes reborn, he’s reborn similar enough to himself - although with some major differences.

The gills for one thing - and the lack of back legs, replaced instead with a tail that’s almost double his length, decorated with dark green frills and stripes of darker black and gold that flicks behind him as he swims - swims like he’s had the knowledge ingrained as to be effortless.

Which is why, as soon as he’s able and old enough in the terms of whatever hybrid species he finds himself now as, he flicks that massive tail and speeds away on the start of a very long journey to find his home (he’s somewhat both sad and happy he didn’t know his reborn forms parents, being born alone, that he lacks the sadness of leaving one family for another but still it might’ve been nice to know their faces at least)

His non-gills and secondary set of lungs are slow to reach peak efficiency until he’s almost the same age as he was when he died - and finally, a familiar island seems not so far off - which at least takes care of one issue, in that he might be fine enough (if less mobile) on land now.

Which is why as the seas embrace gets shallower and shallower, Jaime starts to struggle more and more with co-ordination until he finds a rhythm that’s semi enough alright to pass for now while he wiggles and writhes his way, half dragging himself up onto the beach.

He thinks about the effort of trying to make his way to the more Inlanded Sandbar that holds whatever they might still use to alert for new arrivals, but he’s already here so he might as well stay half in, half out of the water - for his long long tail still swishes in the shallowest waves that come up to kiss the beach sands before retreating in that same rhythm he’d listened to half his former life.

Idly he wonders if the fact his form now still looks recognisably like his past self will mean anyone will remember him - then he wonders if any of his family are even still here.

He hopes so,

He doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

So, swishing his tail and settling his forelimbs, wings mantling back after a brief flap to clear the sand and sea water - he waits for someone to find him.