They had named her Sunswims. She knew this because they had told her, using words and gestures and pictures. "Sun," their word for the big ball in the sky which warmed the earth each day, and "swims" after her propensity to dive into the water.

She tasted the words, feeling how they melded together into one sound. Sunswims. She liked it!

She was learning other words too! Her mother's name was… Small… Fears? She didn't understand the second word and it seemed too complicated to communicate with either gestures or pictures. The crew looked confused, unable to communicate it properly even as a short play.

So many words. She knew all the bits of the ship and the stuff that the bits were made out of, and so, so many different kinds of food!

She still felt so very tired nearly all the time, but when she was awake, things were starting to make more sense, and she enjoyed that.

Right now, she was perched on the edge of a barrel, staring down into the water. There was a sort of big fish inside the bucket, swirling round and round.

They gave her two words, and she understood that one was the type of fish, and one was the word for fish, possibly, along with all the associated words in-between, but she wasn't feeling up to sorting through it all today.

Instead, she balanced on the edge of the barrel and watched the fish, as it swam around and around and around.

-

The fish was bigger than she was, and she had watched two of the sailors wrestle it out of the sea and into the barrel, as it struggled and flipped on the deck. It had almost knocked one of them overboard, but they had tied themselves to the ship with rope, so even if they did go over, they would be safe!

Humans were so smart sometimes. She wanted to be that smart.

Later they would take the fish apart, and turn it into dinner, if not today, then tomorrow. They did smart things to it and made it taste so good that even if she was sleepy, she would still want to eat it.

She stared down at it.

She wanted to eat the fish.

Not tomorrow or tonight or after it was cooked. Not any of the pieces they saved for her.

No, she wanted to eat the fish, and she wanted to do it now.

She realised she was drooling, staring down into the barrel, teetering on the edge.

Around and around…

It was only a fish, how difficult could it be?

She wiggled on the edge of the barrel, sizing up her prey, preparing to pounce.

She moved her tail into position, predicted the movements of her prey, eyed it up and knew it for what it was and would ever be, which was her dinner, and then, she struck!

There was a splash as she hit the water, and she had to remember to seal up her nose, to stop her breathing and to cover her eyes, but all that happened in an instant, and then, she was hunting!

She darted towards her prey, only a little constrained by the tight space within the barrel, but if she was trapped, then so was it!

There was a lot of splashing as her dinner reacted to this intruder in its barrel, but she didn't give it time to flee! As she skimmed her teeth against its side, a part of her realised that maybe this wasn't going to be as easy as she had initially thought, but she ignored it, she was a hunter now.

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Sunsims went in for another bite, moving in opposing circles to the fish, but her teeth skittered off and she received a tail slap across the face in punishment. For a moment she was underwater, unable to breathe or see, but she pulled it back, going in for another round!

She had this!

Her teeth skimmed over the scales for the third time, but then finally caught on the tail, as the fish went in for another slap. With glee, she clamped her jaw shut. This was it!

There was no blood, and she was firmly in the untasty bit of the tail right now, but it was purchase, she could work with that!

The fish, however, was not quite as happy about the situation as she was. It broke from its path and tried to flip her away, whipping its body from side to side, doing everything in its power to free its tail from her jaws.

She was a little rattled by this, but she had a grip now, she couldn't give it up. She would win this, she just had to… Adjust it somehow, and get to the more fleshy parts.

As the fish rammed her into the side of the barrel again, she realised that she was slowing down faster than it was, and her grip, for all the joy it had given her earlier, wasn't really injuring it. She needed to move.

As the fish rammed her into the side of the barrel again, it took all her willpower to hold on.

The fourth time, she was almost ready for it, but while she was prepared, the barrel was not.

In a rush of water, both the dragon and fish washed out across the deck, the flowing water pushing them towards the railings, the fish flipping and writhing the whole time, still trying to shake her off.

She needed to change her grip, but to do that she would have to hold the fish down somehow. She had to do something before it escaped, or both of them ended up in the sea!

She could feel the vibrations of feet as the crew ran across the deck towards them. That wasn't what she needed!

If she could have bared her teeth at them and hissed, she would have, but she was a bit occupied. This was her fight! They were to stay out of it!

The fish flipped again, throwing her upwards, and she finally unclenched her jaw, letting go of the tail and flying across the deck.

She rolled several times and then skidded to a halt, using her wings both to slow the momentum and then to push herself back, hurtling towards the rapidly escaping fish.

She threw forward, using everything in her power to move, skidding around the grasping arms of a sailor and between her mother's legs, jumping a coil of rope, and again, slipping her teeth across the scales of the fish.

She dodged another sailor's arm and another flip of the tail, and this time her teeth caught, perfectly around the top of the body of the fish. The fin cut into the top of her mouth, but that was a small detail, filed away for later.

She could feel its thrashing slowing down her mouth was filling with blood. She wasn't sure how much of it was hers and how much belonged to the fish, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was winning, that she had won!

One of the sailors, she thought their name might be SailWater, ran over, presumably to help. They had a big knife in their hand, and they were looking to take her kill!

She bared her teeth at them, as best she could around her death-grip on the fish, and he paused mid-stride, knife held high. A breath later, he placed one foot on the head of the fish and held it down as it struggled.

She hated it, she hated him! This was her kill! But she was so rattled and beaten about that she was secretly glad of the help, gulping down the blood as best she could.

She bit deeper into the fish, until with a snap her jaws met, and the prey stopped moving.

She swallowed the meat, savouring it. Her own kill! She had done it! She had won!

She bared her teeth again at the watching crowd, and struggled back to her meal as they watched, suddenly exhausted, struggling to stay aloft.

One of the sailors said something, and the others laughed, but she knew it wasn't in a mocking way, and she eyed up her fish. She had managed to get one bite out of it, but how on earth was she to do a second? Her instincts were telling her to swallow it whole before anyone else could steal it from her, but that… That didn't seem at all feasible.

She eyed up the sailor with the knife again. They had taken their foot off the head and stepped back, but they were still watching her, one eyebrow raised.

She made exhausted eye contact with them, the flush of battle washing out of her much like the water out of the barrel.

The sailor shrugged, and then knelt in front of her fish, using the big knife to cut it down into more manageable pieces, which she gulped down one after the other.

Humans were so useful. They didn't have beautiful scales or sharp teeth, but they made their own, which did just as well.

She made it halfway through the fish before she could eat no more. Every instinct screamed at her to hide the rest, to bury it, to sleep and then to come back later and feast again, but her rational mind, what she could pull up through the clouds, knew that wasn't right.

Unable to even keep her eyes open, she nudged the last of the fish towards the few sailors who were still watching, snatched one last bite as a late-night snack, and then headed off to sleep.

The barrel would make her a nice den. It was hers now.

She curled herself up around the slice of fish and drifted down into sleep.

She had won.