It starts in the dark, under a cold, crushing pressure. She is curled into a ball, alone, fingernails gripping her knees.
After a moment, she recognizes the ambient sounds, the muffled winds of ocean currents. She opens her eyes and sees the bay below the shipwreck she calls home. Sunlight reaches down, grazing her with its withered fingertips.
A shadow rushes around her peripheral, a warm torrent in the cold void. It releases a deep, throbbing wail, and she can taste blood in the water. It could closer and tighter and louder until it crashes down around her, pressing her into a whirling, spinning fall. The sunlight is hidden, torn from her eyes.
This is cobbled together from microfiction i wrote after an old tabletop campaign. My character Jet had a pet archaeopteryx and was really good at rogue type stuff. She was raised in the mountains by her father to be a completely self sufficient off-the-grid type but she ended up joining a heist crew after her dad was killed by agents of the fascist government that he had deserted from in his old life. This isn't about any of that it's about her being a gay little weirdo.