My first memory was of water. Cold, dark waves washed over me while sand pelted every inch of my being. My instincts kicked in—my lobed fins fluttered and my tail thrashed, but still I tumbled helplessly until the waves washed me upon the grainy shore. Using my little remaining strength, I hauled my tiny body further onto land, away from the grasping sea. Exhausted, I breathed.
My rest was short lived, however. As I lay gasping, a crab about twice as large as myself took notice of me and scuttled over. Caught between its claws and the merciless ocean, I was certain that one of them would claim me. But I was not entirely without defenses. Baring my teeth, I lunged forward and bit at its leg, leaving a few tiny marks in its carapace. It scuttled away, snapping angrily, and prepared to counter. Before it could strike, however, its eyestalks swayed upwards and frantically, it skittered to the side. Confused at the sudden stroke of luck, I moved to crawl away from it. Something seized me from the air.
There is a certain type of terror that one experiences when they are faced with a threat so impossibly more powerful than themself. I had had a chance against the crab, although it wasn’t a great one, but this being was beyond any hope of fighting. Its very eyes were longer than I was tall, and it could have fit me into its mouth without needing to chew. I squirmed, my fins pinned to my sides, and the creature blinked. It tossed me into a high-walled container with some seawater and carried me away.
Years later, I would learn that this creature was a young human. Although altogether an insignificant being, not to be remembered in her race’s history, she was my savior. She took me to her home, where she lived with several other children of her kind, and kept me fed and protected. I lived a hidden life in her bowl, underneath the place where she slept. It was my good luck to have found someone kind and not clumsy enough to crush me, and so in relative peace I survived and grew.
This Eden of my childhood was not to last, however. A day came when I was large enough to escape the bowl she kept me in, and I began using that ability as soon as I had discovered it. Of course, I was not ungrateful to my friend. I was merely young and curious, and I wished to explore the world beyond the bowl.
Still, it was my decision, or perhaps some inscrutable force of faith, that brought an end to my sheltered life. One day, while I was exploring, a much larger human walked in. As soon as she saw me, she screamed, and it was all I could do to flop myself under the bed to avoid being squashed. Once again it was my friend who saved me. She bargained with the larger human for my life, but it came at the cost of my safety. That evening, she took me back to the shore where she had found me. We stayed there for a while, listening to the sound of the waves, and then she went home.
That first night was a cold and lonely one. I met a few crabs, but they were smaller than I. They scuttled away as soon as they caught sight of me. Cold, and without a companion, I found a pool that was separated from the rest of the ocean by some rocks. I paddled to the bottom of it, hoping that it would be a shelter against the larger nocturnal creatures that my instincts warned me roamed the shore at night. My rest there was an uneasy one, fearful and spent with three eyes open, but when the dawn finally came, I knew that I had survived my first night alone.
The shore in the morning was a much different place, although still dangerous. The crabs came out again, for one thing, and a number of them were larger than me and still thought that newcomers such as I should not be tolerated. They clicked and swayed and scuttled about, but for the most part, they were cowardly, and easy to frighten off.
The real danger was the birds. They came from above, almost out of nowhere, and could carry off just about anything in an instant. On one occasion, I saw a gull swoop down and come up with a fish three times my size. The birds, I learned to fear.
In the afternoon, my friend returned. She brought food with her, a few scraps of fish, which I accepted gratefully. Earlier, I had happened upon a carcass of a full fish that had washed onto the shore, but I had been unable to take more than a few nibbles before the birds found it.
My friend and I picked our way along the shore together. The crabs hid fearfully, and even the birds stayed away, though they squawked enviously and never went fully out of sight. As the sun began to set, my friend went closer to the ocean and splashed at the edges of the waves. Remembering me, she came back to shore and lifted me up so I could get a better view of things without getting washed away. The sun settled over the water, illuminating it in gold and orange and violet flames. I thought there would never be a more beautiful sight, and in my companion’s arms, I felt safe once again.
A day came when I grew too large for my sheltered pool. On that morning, I woke up feeling cold and made the rather disconcerting discovery that the tip of my dorsal fin was poking out above the water. When the wind blew through the crevices in the rocks and made little waves in my pool, they would lap over the fin, leaving it exposed to the cold morning air.
This bothered me for a number of reasons. For one thing, being out of the water for too long was highly uncomfortable. I had begun to dry out, and my dorsal fin was numb for days afterwards. Far more concerning was the idea that I now had to leave my sheltered pool. I had learned from past explorations with my friend that there were other pools, larger than my current one, but they were connected to the ocean and already inhabited.
Still, remaining in my current home was no longer an option. I continued to mull over the situation after I caught a small crab for breakfast. At last, I resolved to explore the closest pool and see it its inhabitants were tolerant of newcomers.
Keeping two eyes out for birds and the other three on the shore ahead, I dragged myself towards the rock pool. It was high tide by this point, so the distance was shorter, and the shimmering ocean seemed so close. Further down the coastline, fishing boats sailed out into the morning waves. I could see all the way to the horizon, but the world beneath the surface was hidden beneath dark water and reflective light.
A gull did catch site of me, but I was at the water by that point. I slipped in, swimming beneath some submerged rocks, and startled a larger fish. It eyed me warily, mouth opening to take in water, but it decided against a fight. From my new hiding place, I saw a school of small fish circling in the shallows. They were a dull green color, but in the sunlight, they shimmered. Suddenly, the school broke apart, fish darting in every direction. There was a splash, and a gull snapped up an unlucky slowpoke. Then the shadow passed, the sea dwellers came out of hiding, and all was back to normal.
Life in the shallows was run by a different set of rules than my old pool. For one thing, I now had neighbors, and I quickly began to update my view of the world based on my new experiences with them. Whereas previously, I had divided all creatures into terms of larger things that could kill me and smaller ones I could eat, I soon learned that there were exceptions to these rules. A small variety of red fish, for instance, was horribly poisonous, and plants could neither attack me nor provide nourishment, which lead me to envy omnivorous beings on a number of occasions. Learning these experiences cost me a good number of hungry days, especially in the beginning, but my good luck kept me alive and growing.
There was, of course, a fifth category in my schema: that of friends. The human girl remained the only being who fit into that group, but she remained in it faithfully. She would visit me less often, but much about our outings remained comfortably familiar. The cowardly crabs—I outranked all of them in size by this point—predictably scattered when we approached, and the gulls still screamed from a safe distance. The tide still rose and fell.
Sometimes, my friend would wade into the water, clothes and all, and swim with me. In this, I found some pride, for I was faster than she. Still, I would never stray too far from her and the protection she provided against the gulls and larger sea dwellers. Together we would venture out, often further than I would dare to go by myself in those early days, and play among the waves. We would dive and splash and revel in the joy of childhood.
One day while we were swimming together, a mischievous mood came upon my friend. In jest, she grabbed my tail and pulled me under the water. Instincts made me struggle out of her grasp and dart away. Trailed by her laughter, I silently circled back for revenge.
My friend treaded water, still giggling. I approached silently. When I was a mere few feet away, I put on a burst of speed and bit the back of her shirt, dragging her underneath the water with me. Panicking, she struggled and kicked, but I continued to pull her further under. She twisted around and tried to pry me off.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
I believe that it was at that point that I realized the jest had gone too far. I let go and, gasping, my friend surfaced and made sure, steady strokes toward the shore. She did not stop until she had fully left the water. Coughing, she stood on the sand, still dripping wet. When she acknowledged me at last, her breath once again went unsteady. I pulled myself out of the water. Surely she did not appear injured? Surely I had not been the cause of her fear?
You may think me a fool, but until this point, I had believed that creatures of the land were vastly superior to creatures of the water. All of my aquatic neighbors—myself being the one exception—could not survive outside of the water, where they flopped helplessly for a few moments before going still. Meanwhile, beings such as the gulls and my friend could dive into the ocean, with no more warning than a shadow, and pluck up any creature they wanted. The thought that a bird could be drowned was foreign, but once it occurred to me, I could not stop wondering about it.
In the meantime, my friend could not stay angry at me. She sat down, watching the waves lap against the shore, an allowed me to rest beside her. The two of us remained there until the sun had set, drying off and getting sandy. I wish that I could say my mind was focused solely on the sunset and good company, but that would be a lie.
The thought of drowning a gull and ending its reign of arial terror was too tempting to ignore. And though I feared it and wanted to forget having ever realized it, a new seed of wonder began to steadily grow: Was my friend really so invincible, and when would her protection of me end?
As much as I wanted it, my dream of catching a gull would have to wait. Raw strength was not an issue—indeed, I had grown so much that the seabirds were beginning to fear me. As infuriating as they were, they were quick, and they had the whole sky to which to flee. Nevertheless, I almost managed it on a few occasions. From these near-successes, the birds began to recognize me, and they began to fly as soon as they felt any current of my approach.
Still, I had other matters to worry about than getting revenge on seabirds. Winter had rolled around again and with it came a shortage of food. My life had completed its first cycle around the sun, but this time, I was much better acquainted with the world than when I had first hatched. Still, that season is no easy time, and hunger affected me just as it affects everyone.
The fishing boats did not improve the situation. With colder weather setting in and the winter storms set to be arriving soon, my food supply sought shelter in deeper water. I had no choice but to follow them, which put me into the territory of the fishing boats. With every net they cast, there was one fewer fish to satiate me. The great wooden things scared me almost as much as the gulls once had. I marveled at the sheer number of fish they netted, wondering just how ravenous they must be. I avoided them as best as I could, keeping myself above starvation while dodging their nets and hooks. Still, the winter was shaping up to be a lean one, and there was nothing to be done about it.
Eventually, though, the winter weather drove all but the most desperate away. The seas grew harsh, and the other fish and I found refuge in waters even deeper and further from the coast. The season was not easy. Storms constantly battered the ocean, and both sky and sea were almost constantly dark. During one particularly fierce tempest, the currents picked me up and washed me to the surface. The sky was almost lightless and the waves were monstrously huge. Before I hid, I caught site of a dreadfully large pair of fins attached to a horrifyingly giant face. The larger fish, reveling in the storm, did not notice me, and I dove to a safer depth before it could see me.
Still, most of the winter was uneventful, and I was cold and lonely throughout the majority of it. I was only too happy when spring returned at last and I could finally return to my home.
When I returned to the shallows, I was relieved to find the place relatively unchanged. The coastal waters were comfortably warmer, and on my first day back, I was able to snag two colorful fish for a meal. Better yet, I returned to find a familiar face. My friend, too, had grown, although I was surprised to find that I was now larger than she. Still, we picked up with our games as though we had never paused them, and all was as it should have been.
It had been months since I had traversed these shallow waters. They were so familiar to me, so fundamental to my youth, that I reacted with first denial and then surprise to find that things had changed. For one thing, the fish were not quite as plentiful as they had been the previous year. I was still growing, showing no signs of slowing down, and I required much more food than I had the previous year. For another, my new, larger body had, at last, revealed a downside in its design. I found myself so unused to traveling in shallow waters that I misjudged how a wave would push me and crashed into a coral reef. The water clouded with blood and broken coral, and a good-sized rainbow fish that might have been my dinner escaped in the confusion. The incident might not have been so embarrassing had it not happened twice more during that morning.
In the end, it became clear that I had simply grown too large and too unwieldy for the coastal shallows. Hunger made me reckless, and my temper grew short. I decided that the fishermen could afford to share their waters with me for a bit. It wasn’t conceived with the best judgement, of course, but the stomach does not always concur with sanity.
The fishermen no doubt thought me strange. There I was, a five-eyed fish as long as a small boat, suddenly in their territory. I had grown used to evading their nets the previous year, and that skill served me well in the present. Still, I was the invader, and it was not long before they set their sights upon me.
I avoided a confrontation for a long while, thanks my alert senses. I steered clear of the fishing boats, diving for deeper waters whenever they were around. I would hear their shouts whenever I showed up too close to the surface, but for the time being, we had yet to make contact. I ate well and the fishermen ate well and the fish diminished.
It happened one summer’s day that I ran into a net. I was drifting about lazily, and my own carelessness was to blame more than anything else. Suddenly, I felt a tug and noticed that one of my front fins was tangled in the mesh. On the boat, the two fishermen shouted excitedly.
They dragged me closer as I struggled to free myself. I thrashed, hitting the boat with the full force of my being. The men’s shouts turned fearful. Their boat was a small one, but they would not leave it without fighting. I threw myself against the vessel again, and a netful of fish tumbled off of the deck. There was no time to mourn the waste. One of the men had recovered, and with a long pole he battered me, narrowly missing my center eye. I roared, crashing against the boat once again, and that was the end of it.
One of them clung to a piece of wreckage and swum. The other struggled for a moment, trying to find the surface, before doing the same. Another boat had seen the wreck. It was close enough that I could hear the men shouting on it, but not so close that it would be upon us in an instant.
I didn’t eat the men. It certainly would have benefitted me to have less competition, but I could not bring myself to do it. I was still reeling with amazement that I was capable of destroying their boats, and they were so similar in appearance to my friend that I felt as though I was preparing to drown her. I was disturbed that I had even considered it. Distressed, I left them bobbing and swam away.
I found my friend later that day. She was playing on the beach, building a mound out of wet sand, and she cheered at my appearance. Relieved to have an escape from the events of the morning, I allowed her to cling to my dorsal fin while I swam the two of us around the harbor. I looked for a school of fish to startle, but there was none to be found.
This is how I tried to live for a while. The fishermen searched for me actively, and I destroyed their boats until larger ones came, their crews armed with more dangerous weapons. The influx of men forced me to remain in deeper waters. It was dark there, and I went many weeks without seeing the surface of the water. I began to wonder if they had forgotten their search. Hopeful, I swam skywards.
On the day I returned to the surface, I finally captured a gull.
Life as I knew it unraveled as the weeks proceeded. My reputation had been formed as a monster fish, a destroyer of boats and a danger to all manner of life. When people saw me, they hated me. They called their neighbors and fought back with spears and more painful instruments. They situated themselves in larger boats, the likes of which I could not destroy. In response, I hid myself well, deep in the waters of the harbor and far from the sky. Never again was I seen by a human, except my one little friend, and we took care to remain out of sight. Eventually, they stopped hunting me, deciding me either dead or gone away. The village and I were once again at peace.
In the end, however, even that eluded me. It was not my destruction of their boats that finished the village, although I am certain that that contributed to it. The true answer was much more pathetic than that. I, the intruder, was simply able to outcompete the native species for food. Staying hidden, I had done as much damage to the harbor’s fragile ecosystem as I might have done in the open sunlight. The fishing boats diminished, village houses were abandoned, and only I remained. After a while, I, too, moved on.
There is one memory that stayed clear with me when I made my final swim out of the harbor and back into the open ocean. It was the last time I saw my friend.
She’s standing there, waiting. There’s water in her hair, and bits of it frizz out in a half-dried state to capture the light. Although I pose a greater danger to her than anything else on this beach, she’s not looking at me with hopelessness or fear. We know each other too well for that.
She reaches out, touches my face, and closes her eyes. I will never know her final thoughts about me, not in the many long years I have left in this life, but I would like to think that they were not filled with regret for saving me. I would like to believe that someday, we shall go back to the happy times we once had together. And in the bright, shallow waters of our youth, we shall once again find safety, comfort, and joy.