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Description
It was a huge mistake being out on this cold winter's night. A winter wind made the seas too rough to navigate, and the clouds were being blocked out by the stars. I lost my footing and fell into the sea, my frigid body sinking into the water. I closed my eyes and didn't expect to open them ever again...
  ... But I did. I found myself wrapped in a blanket and seated next to a glowing campfire, with a cup of something warm and fishy-smelling being pressed into my hands. Those hands felt strange, like the webbing between my fingers had grown. I nearly spilled the cup's contents (hot fish soup) onto myself when I looked at them. Those were otter paws holding the cup.
  "Sorry about that, sir," said a voice. I turned to my left look and found a man seated there. He looked like a "It'll wear off eventually. It was either that or hypothermia." said a voice. I turned to look and there was a man there. He looked hairy yet lithe.
  "What happened?" I asked.
  "You were about to drown," he replied, "but I found you just in time."
  Once I'd warmed up, he helped me find my way back to the village, and I turned around to thank him. But he was gone, vanished into the night without a trace.
I thought I'd seen the ghost of someone like me, someone else who had lost his life in that way so many years ago and wanted to spare me the same fate. The locals said otherwise: their tales speak of something called a kushtaka, a creature that can shift between human and otter. These creatures have been known to save individuals lost in the cold by transforming them into kushtaka themselves. I don't know if that's what happened, but the description seems to be a close fit. It would explain why the villagers weren't caught off-guard by a talking otter.
  Whatever that man did to me, it was temporary: I did eventually change back into a human and have been one ever since. But I do wonder if I could change back into an otter if I wanted to. Perhaps I should give it a try.

Moral: some of the best good that people do is done in secret.

I don't know if I got the kushataka mythology correct, but I don't mind if I didn't. Myths and legends that describe real things aren't necessarily accurate to that real thing.

I thought of writing a straightforward ghost story for this , but due to my strong personal convictions , I don't write about disembodied spirits of deceased individuals (see Hebrews 9:27 ). I could've written about "stone tape " style ghosts, which are just "recordings" of peoples' energy rather than spirits left on earth after death, but I couldn't really come up with a good story based on that. So I went with this instead. Hopefully it's close enough.

I'm doing Inktober this year, but instead of using the official Inktober prompts, I'm using two prompts for Octransfur - one by and another by . See the whole series here !

Medium: ink pen.

Description
It was a huge mistake being out on this cold winter's night. A winter wind made the seas too rough to navigate, and the clouds were being blocked out by the stars. I lost my footing and fell into the sea, my frigid body sinking into the water. I closed my eyes and didn't expect to open them ever again...
  ... But I did. I found myself wrapped in a blanket and seated next to a glowing campfire, with a cup of something warm and fishy-smelling being pressed into my hands. Those hands felt strange, like the webbing between my fingers had grown. I nearly spilled the cup's contents (hot fish soup) onto myself when I looked at them. Those were otter paws holding the cup.
  "Sorry about that, sir," said a voice. I turned to my left look and found a man seated there. He looked like a "It'll wear off eventually. It was either that or hypothermia." said a voice. I turned to look and there was a man there. He looked hairy yet lithe.
  "What happened?" I asked.
  "You were about to drown," he replied, "but I found you just in time."
  Once I'd warmed up, he helped me find my way back to the village, and I turned around to thank him. But he was gone, vanished into the night without a trace.
I thought I'd seen the ghost of someone like me, someone else who had lost his life in that way so many years ago and wanted to spare me the same fate. The locals said otherwise: their tales speak of something called a kushtaka, a creature that can shift between human and otter. These creatures have been known to save individuals lost in the cold by transforming them into kushtaka themselves. I don't know if that's what happened, but the description seems to be a close fit. It would explain why the villagers weren't caught off-guard by a talking otter.
  Whatever that man did to me, it was temporary: I did eventually change back into a human and have been one ever since. But I do wonder if I could change back into an otter if I wanted to. Perhaps I should give it a try.

Moral: some of the best good that people do is done in secret.

I don't know if I got the kushataka mythology correct, but I don't mind if I didn't. Myths and legends that describe real things aren't necessarily accurate to that real thing.

I thought of writing a straightforward ghost story for this , but due to my strong personal convictions , I don't write about disembodied spirits of deceased individuals (see Hebrews 9:27 ). I could've written about "stone tape " style ghosts, which are just "recordings" of peoples' energy rather than spirits left on earth after death, but I couldn't really come up with a good story based on that. So I went with this instead. Hopefully it's close enough.

I'm doing Inktober this year, but instead of using the official Inktober prompts, I'm using two prompts for Octransfur - one by and another by . See the whole series here !

Medium: ink pen.