Light filtered in through the blinds of the french windows. It made tremulous stripes along the scrubbed pine floor.

She should have stayed in the ocean where she belonged. She could have married some nice young merman and had some cute little merbabies and lived a long, happy life—

If new legal considerations regarding treatment of the pre-dead are introduced, then the provisions ought to allow individuals to express prior wishes as to their preferences for how they wish to be cared for in pre-dead states, or even to allow for a 'conscience clause' such that they or their advocates could reject such a notion whilst retaining no right of veto over the existing cardiorespiratory and brain stem considerations of death.

[…] “Our host, his fair spouse, and bare-footen maiden, seemed equally strangers to the wholesome duties of ablution; […]”