The shark is back.

Andrew can tell from the way his raft is shaking, like a leaf riding the surface of a rippling pond.

“Leave me be!” he cries out as he clings to his shrinking vessel. He's managed to tuck his legs under him and his head between his arms, so that no part of his body will be exposed to the edges of the raft. But he knows he will not be able to hide like this much longer. With each visit, the shark has taken off more wood until there is barely enough raft for Andrew to float on.

Andrew lifts his head up just as the shark slides its shiny grey head out of the water.

"Stop this torture already!" he screams as the creature's maw locks onto a corner. "I don’t even have any meat on me!"

The shark fixes its dead gaze onto Andrew, and time seems to go still as Andrew starts to recognize that look.

Hateful. Vengeful. Familiar.

With a shuddering twist, the shark tears off another chunk of Andrew's raft, then slips below the waves without another sound.

Andrew lowers his head back between his arms, shivering under the sunlight. After a long while, he gets up and goes to fixing what he can, trying his best to put the monster's dark eyes out of his mind.

It is noon before Andrew manages to stabilize his raft with what little he has. With the breeze in his hair, he stands and surveys the waves. There is no sign of the shark, though Andrew must admit that even if there are he doesn't have any way to stop it. The monster has been terrorizing him for days now, but doesn't seem to want to kill him yet.

Instead, it's tormenting me. Taking apart my haven bit by bit.

A gentle breeze picks up in the afternoon. In the corner broken by the shark, Andrew finds another tooth. It's much smaller compared to the others he's collected off the shark so far, but it has the same cruel edges, and is coated in a yellowish sheen that makes the tooth look like it's always wet.

Andrew runs the small tooth through his fingers. It's roughly the same size as his fingernails. He examines his hands. The wounds he received from making his bowls have started to heal, though the nail on his right ring finger is still missing. More for fun than anything else, Andrew presses the tooth to the gap where his fingernail is missing. He finds that it's almost a perfect fit, if he doesn't mind the grotesque look.

He gets an idea. If he can somehow attach the tooth to his thumbnail, he can use it as a cutting tool or a weapon. It will be like having a dagger always in reach.

To test it, Andrew reaches for one of the bigger teeth around his neck. He keeps all of them wrapped up on a thick string, for fear of losing the only sharp objects he has access to. The biggest tooth runs the length of his thumb, and bites into the wood easily when Andrew drags it along one side of the raft.

Andrew is impressed, but with that feeling comes dread. What will it feel like when a row of these teeth sinks into his flesh?

Finding himself sick at the thought, Andrew ties both the big and small teeth onto the string and hangs it back around his neck. He doesn't want to see them anymore. Not yet.

The shark does not come tomorrow morning, but another beast makes itself known to Andrew.

Hunger. Deep inside Andrew's bones, he feels it gnawing at him, demanding food he does not have.

Crawling over to the stern as slowly as he can, as to not upset the delicate balance keeping him afloat, Andrew checks on his surviving fishing lines. Two are left from the shark's constant attacks, and Andrew slides his fingers along each to feel for any vibrations that may give away a fish’s struggles, or some sort of heaviness that hints at something being dragged in the current. But he feels no change. The lines float on the waves with ease.

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Anger builds. Andrew yanks one of the lines hard. The button hook jumps out onto the deck, murky-green and empty as the day it is made. Andrew curses, though he doesn't know what else he expects to see. He drops the hook and pulls at the other one. He’s just glimpsed the top of that hook when he hears a splash behind him, followed by a sudden shaking of his raft. He cries out in alarm as his body pitches forward from the shift, the water rushing up to swallow him whole.

If I fall in, I die.

Truth is sometimes so simple it takes you by surprise. With sheer force of will, Andrew manages to right his balance before he topples into the ocean, but he finds he isn't afraid of falling in. Not really. Not anymore. It's as if all the fear inside him has been spent already, leaving nothing but acceptance and a strange, growing sense of defiance.

Standing, Andrew faces his attacker with a calmness he doesn't know he is capable of.

But the shark isn’t there. No one is here to eat him. All around, the sea is quiet. Waves lap at the dipping edges of the raft, where a small pile of debris is scattered across the logs.

Andrew blinks, thinking the sun is playing tricks. He dares not go closer, but he does. The debris takes shape. A length of worn rope, a sliver of faded red plastic, and what seems to be a rusty nail, are stacked near the very edge of the water.

Andrew doesn’t believe it. He picks up the nail and holds it to the sunlight. Every inch of the iron is coated in rust, but the weight of the material remains consistent with what he knows a nail to be.

It's real. But how can it be?

Andrew grips the nail in his fist, as if by affirming its solidity he can convince his mind of this strange reality. Something, or someone, has brought the nail from the bottom of the ocean. Not only that, it has also managed to put it on Andrew's raft without him seeing it.

Andrew turns to scrutinize the crystal clear surface of the ocean.

Human or god... or neither?

It doesn't take him long for Andrew to decide that he must be going crazy. But it doesn't matter, because the nail and plastic are exactly what Andrew needs, he thinks.

Going back over to the edge, Andrew picks up the piece of plastic. It's thin and semi-translucent, making everything look red when Andrew looks through it. He can't tell where it is from originally, and he guesses it may have once belonged to a child's kite that the wind must have carried off long ago. He throws the materials beside the leather bowls he's made, and starts to comb through his memories of Aragon Dragonia's adventures. Surely, the Great Adventurer has mentioned how to create a Water Maker in one of his many, many books. Andrew just has to remember every detail about it.

By the time the sun is going down, Andrew has come up with his own version of the Water Maker. First, he fills the large leather bowl with seawater, then sets the smaller one drifting on its surface. Using a tooth, he carves a flat nook into the center of the raft to make a stable place to set these bowls. Then, making sure to not break it, Andrew stretches the piece of plastic over the top of the larger bowl. Like everything, the plastic has been baking under direct sunlight all afternoon, but it still isn't soft enough to mold. After working at it for a bit, Andrew realizes that the plastic actually has another layer of thinner plastic stuck to its bottom side, and using a smaller shark tooth he manages to work the thin sheet off the plastic.

This sheet is perfect. It's almost entirely transparent, which means sunlight is easier to travel through. And it's also wildly more flexible. Andrew wraps it across the top of his big bowl, then sits back and admires his setup. He isn't sure this is how Aragon Dragnoia wrote about it, but he's damn pleased with what he's managed to do with the scrap he has. There’s something missing, though. Andrew knows that sunlight is supposed to draw the drinkable portion of the seawater up as steam, where the plastic will catch it in the forms of condensation, hopefully turning it back into drinkable water that will then drop down into the little bowl floating in the big bowl.

The problem soon becomes obvious. With the way the Water Maker is now, the condensation will simply fall back down into the big bowl with no incentive to gather, gravity being one law not even alchemy can alter. But the solution, after Andrew looks around for a bit, is also obvious. He needs the plastic sheet to dip above the smaller bowl, so the droplets will travel downwards and gather there, eventually falling under their own collective weight.

It doesn't matter how he does it, but Andrew doesn't want to use the nail as it will most definitely end up puncturing the plastic film.

So that leaves him with no other choice than to use one of the teeth on his necklace.

Carefully unraveling one of the medium-sized ones, Andrew sets it down in the middle of the plastic sheet, and watches in satisfaction as it causes that dip he so needs.

And then, like that, he is done.

Andrew sits back and lets out an exhausted breath. He stares at the little bowl bobbing in its own little piece of the ocean, and tries to find comfort in the hope that if all goes well, he’ll have drinkable water tomorrow when the sun comes back up.

But when the sun is back, so will the shark.

The anger returns. Andrew sets his jaw and gets back up. No, he will not cower anymore. He's already taken the first steps in mastering his own fate. He's come too far to let nature destroy him now, not when he’s already set his mind on living.

So with renewed courage and vigor, Andrew reaches down and finds the rusty nail he's been keeping tucked away under the bundle of rope.

If the shark is adamant it wants to eat him, then Andrew is going to make it work for its food.