There is a great tangle of discarded netting floating upon the sea. Many things, both living and otherwise, get caught upon it forming a long and narrow chain of unstable isnds that drift with the wind and currents.

  A child, lost at sea, finds this archipego of detritus and thinks it salvation.

  The child finds a whale tangled in the net, alive but too tired to keep struggling.

  The child is still attempting to free the whale when this collection of seaborne refuse drifts into another. The second isle of junk is ordered, constructed, formed into a floating fortress of shacks and houses.

  An old man who had been sitting on a porch on the edge of the new isnd overlooking calls out to the child. He is excited at having met someone new after so long.

  The child pleads with the old man to help him with the whale. He agrees, not because he cares about the whale, but because it is something different and he hopes the child will move onto the isnd he built afterwards.

  There is a woman living on the isnd with the old man. She is the only other inhabitant, and while she helps with freeing the whale and taking the child in, she is not happy about it. She has made herself a stable and happy (of a sorts) life here and the addition of a newcomer threatens to disrupt the delicate bance that she’s found.