Home for a castaway
"Yer awake!"
Quentel groaned as his eyes fluttered, trying to adjust to the light. The ground was rocking - that made sense, on the shi-
The storm, the waves, the rocks
Quentel's eyes shot open, and he bolted up - or, he tried to, at least.
"Woah! Tak it easy, big fella, yer all fahn, ah promise!"
There was a weight on him, which his now-open eyes were able to identify as a... child? No, they had stubble. Not a dwarf, either, or that'd be a beard. A... small person, of some variety. They quickly backed up and off of him, and he groaned again as he sat up properly this time. "What ar-"
His attempt at a question devolved into coughs, but the little one - his rescuer? - seemed to grasp the question.
"Whoy, mistah, ahm just a loifgahd. Saw ya floatin out theh, ah hadta go outin' getcha, yeah?"
Well, part of the way, anyway. Quentel got the last of his coughs out of his system, before shaking his head to get the grogginess out. At the same time, he noticed his clothing hanging in a corner of the room. Deciding that could be handled later, he turned toward the... lifeguard? He hoped he'd parsed their accent properly. "Er, thank you, but I, ah. I meant, what are you? Like, I'm human, the captain was an elf, that sort of thing."
The little lifeguard grinned. "Ah, that's simple! Ahm a squall! Guess ah coul be mistahken fer a gnom, er mahbe a kendah - possibleh a-"
The, ah, "squall" kept going on about races that he apparently resembled; Quentel had only ever heard of gnomes, and they certainly didn't act like this. He had a headache - probably not from the lifeguard squall, but the little guy wasn't really helping. Or, well. Not with their voice.
He took the opportunity to check under the sheet of the bed he'd awoken in. His underpants were there, but nothing else. Oh well; what wasn't hanging up in the corner was probably either too torn up to reuse or sunken to the bottom of the ocean. His eyes swept over the room again, noticing a window up near the ceiling for the first time; he couldn't see much from his vantage point, but he thought he saw the roof of a different building.
Which brought him to his next question. "E-excuse me," he said, the squall's rant coming to a stop. "Where actually are we?"
"Ah guess ya wodden' know." They were stroking their beard. They barely even had a beard. "Well, yer awake now, sos ah ken do this proppaly! Welcome ta Drift'om! We's ecshly jus koinda a wee etpost, but we del wit foranahs frequenly enuff. It ain't offen we's gotta do loifgahden, but somtems ya get a wreck out 'ere."
Quentel's brain was boggling. This was... Drift'om? Drifthome? Something? Would saying it wrong offend them? And it was an... outpost, maybe? He thought he was getting this right. An outpost of what? They retrieved people from wrecks? And they did this often enough to have a job for it... to have a bed large enough for people like him, it suddenly occurred to him.
What?
Quentel only realized he'd spoken that part out loud when the squall laughed. "Ah, doncha worry yaself 'bout all thah yet! Ya just gottere, all tired-loik, is foin! Ah ken show ya aboot the refttown when ya's readya wolk aboot again."
He wasn't sure when that'd be... but he wasn't planning to stay in this bed any longer than he had to.
(Sudorandom requested aquatic hobbits. Behold: hobbits squalls who have an entire civilization built on raft-towns and raft-cities in the middle of the ocean, and who rescue people from shipwrecks. They probably have tons upon tons of ways to cook seafood and gathering materials from the sea for adding flavors. Maybe not the atlanteans you were hoping for, but I like how this came out.)