It understands. It doesn't like it. It's not happy. But it understands the bargain she's forcing it to take, and beneath its impotent rage, it's willing. Daine thinks, distant and rueful, that it'd be short work to remove the improvised spears from its body if it would just let her. But it wouldn't. She's got a good enough sense of this beastie to know that letting it live is all the mercy it can stomach - and probably all the mercy it deserves.

She doesn't release it, though; not yet. Not until she hears Coromotto's tense whisper: "They're ashore."

Go. Daine punctuates the order with a sharp magical prod, and the the beast retreats with a furious roar and a wild flailing of tentacles. A wave of seawater and sand swamps her and her wolf. They both come up gasping, but Daine can feel the beast's retreat. Once she's scraped her hair out of her eyes, they confirm it. The water's still troubled, but the creature is out of sight, its presence in her mind fading fast.

Ugh.

Daine gets to her feet, and she and Coromotto slog to shore. They pause once they're on the sand, him to shake himself off and her to wring out her curls. Then they approach Johnny and the woman and their respective animals. "Are you all right?" Daine asks, rubbing her forehead.