Kris's feet squished in the cool sand, the smell of seaweed and salt drifting into her nose from the gently waving ocean on her left side. On the right side, music and chatter from a tin-roofed beach bar rolled in, accompanied by the sizzle of shrimp frying. The sun was just beginning to set, allowing her to take off her darkly tinted lenses and view the scene in full color.

Something caught her eye on the edge of the water, right where the sand turned from wave-kissed wet to dry and gritty. It looked like a plastic bag surrounded by strands of pom-pom streamers, lying abandoned between stinking heaps of sargasso. She bent down to look at it, thinking she might pick it up and throw it out in the garbage, when she noticed the clear surface was tinted with bluish-purple. It was a jellyfish!

"Poor little guy," she murmured, reaching down towards it. "Oh, you must be so dried out. Let me help you get back in the water."

The jellyfish made no response, of course.

"Stop!" The voice was so loud and coming closer. Kris froze instinctively. "Don't touch it!"

She turned around to see a lifeguard running towards her, a young shirtless guy wearing a whistle around his neck. He had a tattoo on the side of his arm, words she couldn't read.

"That's a Portuguese man of war," he said urgently. "If its tentacles touch you, you might die."

Kris slowly retracted her hand from where it had been, barely three inches from the jellyfish's bulbous surface. She narrowed her eyes and looked at the lifeguard curiously. "What do you know about jellyfish?" He looked like he had just stepped out of a frat house.

"Uh, not much, but they said in the training that the purple flag means toxic wildlife, so you can't swim right now."

"But I wasn't swimming," she protested with a giggle. "I was just taking a walk to see some friends down the beach."

"Er, okay, miss." The lifeguard gave her a friendly salute. "Just make sure you don't touch those jellyfish. They can mess you up really bad."

"Of course." She watched him walk away, back to his seat in a beach chair next to a Bluetooth speaker playing rap country. Once she was satisfied he was no longer looking, she knelt back down beside the man of war. "As I was saying. Help me get you back to the water."

She extended her arm, and the blue-green ocean swelled up at her pull. A wave formed and washed over the jellyfish, pulling it back into the ocean, where its tentacles splayed out behind its tiny squishy body in thanks.