Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of the ocean.

It's not like I'd had any choice in the matter. One moment I was surfing along the coast of Baja on my 9-footer and the next moment a shuttle dropped from the sky and chased be all the way to the beach. To say that I was pissed off was an understatement.

The surf had been so excellent and I was supposed to go to a clam bake later.

Damned resistance fighters.

It's my own fault really. They'd busted me out of the facility in Florida. Yeah, I wasn't the reason they had been there in the first place. Something about a datastore and some neat encryption keys. Don't know much about those. They aren't all that shiny and no where nearly as interesting as the neat old bottle caps I found buried in the sand outside of my camper.

Landwalkers have strange priorities.

Anyways, one of this team of furries saw me swimming around my little tank and had felt sorry for me I guess. I don't know why. Yeah, the tank was cramped but they did let me out sometimes and they fed me all the fish I wanted if I was good.

So the furries broke me out of my tank and smuggled me onto their little hopper and flew me off to their rendezvous point near some place called San Diego. They offered to take me with them. Into space to where they were hiding. But I declined. My eyes were locked on that big blue ocean I had never known… That called to me somewhere deep deep deep inside.

But to be polite I'd said I would help them one day if they needed it. I should have watched my mouth.

Because now I was paying for it.

The past few years had been very neat. Swimming down the coast so warmer waters. Sleeping on the uninhabited beaches and playing tag with the fish and my cousins the dolphins.

But I got lonely. I had no one to sing to. No one to rub against or jump around with. No one like me. Smart.

Then one morning, dozing in a shallow pool in the sun, I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by a bunch of scraggly pink skins with large strange planks under their arms. They blinked and just stared at me as if I was some strange thing. It was sort of insulting. I wasn't strange. They were.

At first I was scared. Over the time I had been free I had come to accept that my old caretakers weren't the nice people I had forced myself to believe they were out of necessity. And these people were pinkskins just as my caretakers had been pink skins.

The furries had told me how the pinkskins hated furries and things not pink. So I was scared these ones would hurt me. Or kidnap me and take me back to the facility to be re-educated like some of my old tank mates that would disappear over time.

But these pinkskins were different. They were so nice and seemed happy to see me. They soothingly reassured me after I had wailed a scared mournful song for long long minutes that they weren't going to hurt me. That they actually had nothing against me. They were just there looking for the Big Wave.

I didn't understand this and I told them so. The Oldest, a pinkskin male named Casey, showed me his 'board'. A 9 foot long piece of something called fiberglass. It was shaped long and rounded at each end and on the bottom it had a FIN! Like ME!

Casey saw that I was intrigued by the board and grinned as he ran out into the water.. Laying on his board he swam out far into the waves.. Curious and no longer scared (who can be scared for more then 3 minutes when there is such NEAT THINGS to see) I swam along side of him and my breath caught in my blowhole as he stood up and RODE the waves.

It was mesmerizing.. It was intoxicating. Watching Casey weave in and out of the largest waves.. through their curls and shooting out the other side like squid ink.

I new I had to try.

And so I became friends with Casey and his Pod of 'Surf Gypsies'. They welcomed me into their family. One of them, a Pair of twins named Merry and Terry, Made me a hammock in their trailer.

For a whole season I stayed with them. They taught me to surf and told me stories about humans and the world around me. We sat around campfires and sang songs, drinking strange liquids that made me feel funny and happy and playful. I took them out divingm though they couldn't hold their breath like me, and showed them all the shines I had found in the sand.

When the days started getting shorter they said they had to leave. They asked me to come along, pleased me in their non musical song they speak in. I cried and sang to them that I couldn't. Terry and Merry Gave me their Trailer and they promised to be back in a few months.

And for 3 years they kept coming back. For three years we had been a great family. For three years they kept my secret.

They were due back any day now, but the shuttle landing near my hidden trailer makes my fin ache with fear. I knew they had returned because they needed my help.

I made a promise. I have to keep it. Just Like Casey and Merry and Terry have always kept their promises to me.

Because promises are important.

I dug my board's end into the sand, letting it stand upwards. It was painted like me. A silvery gray, almost iridescent in the warm sun. I stood there, hands on my hips and waited o them, my ground length loincloth waggling in the breeze.

To be sure, I didn't recognize the furries as the ones who rescued me. At least not all of them All the furred types or pinkskins seems to be mostly indistinguishable to me from the rest of their kinds. They only tend to stand out if they made a real impression on me.

And the only one who had made an impression was a female feline with fur that was made up of whites and browns and golds and had silverfish eyes. She was the one who stepped off the hopper first and strolled down the beach towards me, wearing a loose fitting sundress much like the ones Merry or Terry would wear in the mornings when they went to make breakfast.

The female casually walked up to me, spending only a second to note that even though I wore a loincloth, it hid nothing. Personally, I don't even know why I wear it. Oh, right.. The Gypsies said it was slightly distracting. Pinkskin Modesty.

"Still as modest as ever." The female noted, making a sound that was part chuckle part purr. I just nodded back. She sighed and brushed her mane like hair from those silvery eyes. "You know why we're here?" she asked, suddenly serious.

I nodded yet again. "I made a promise to help you if you needed it." I sang with resignation. The feline winced a bit and nodded back.

"Yeah. We need your help. You better get some stuff together, it could be a few weeks before you come back."

"Okay. I won't be long."

With that I picked up my board and walked towards my trailer. The feline walking alongside me, casually.. Her shipmates standing back at the hopper, watching everything as if they were expecting something to attack.

"So… You know.. You never had gave us your name when we rescued you." She told me as I leaned the board up against the trailer.

"Never had one then."

"You have one now?"

I nodded as I opened the door.. then stopped to look at her. "Yes…. My friends…. They call me Finn."

The feline blinked.. then chuckled. "Fitting name for a Dolphin." She murmured and started back towards the hopper as I began composing my note for the others so they wouldn't be worried when they returned and I wasn't here.

I really shouldn't have gotten out of the ocean.