Here it comes. The prophecy is surely being fulfilled. Acanorex swims toward it, as do at least two dozen fellow companions. The darkness of the night does not help, but the deeper darkness of the fast, relentlessly advancing vessel above does. Acanorex can see at least four dozen of his fellow volunteer kin swimming toward the smaller, yet equally speedy vessels flanking the first. The first: the one that is his. Acanorex comes up to the fast moving, dark, slimy oak surface, positions the top of his head against it, then expands the muscular sucking disc that crowns this part of his anatomy, creating suction against the surface of the ship. By now most of his slightly slower – it’s not their fault -- fellow volunteers had done the same. More than slightly slower, in reality, reckons Acanorex, especially considering that it was him, not they, who was born with the slightly-yet-evidently crooked spine – he’s still faster. But back to the prophecy. It is surely being fulfilled. And the volunteers could only do what they were built by nature and by time to do: Cling. The gradual evolution of their spiny first dorsal fin resulted in the sucking disk that makes their proud Echeneididae family stand out within the realm, stand out in this case for a purpose, and a noble one at that: Delay. These were Acanorex’s seas, and his kin’s and ancestors’, and if the prophecy was right, which it was, it’s already proving to be, the taste of Huelvan oak on his sucking disk the proof -- not that he’d ever tasted Huelvan oak before, but… -- this was foreign for sure. A vessel this big? Foreign, and there he was along with his kin to stand by their famed name and delay this intrusion. Even if to delay it by only minutes. Even if to delay it by only seconds. But so if the prophecy was right, which it was, then at least live the rest of your years knowing you did something important, partook of this historical moment, did more even than the humans themselves did. The humans who have no clue, even -- even now -- what is going on, what’s in store. Probably sitting on their asses, laughing, smoking, sucking at each other – not the kind of sucking that he and his kin did – he and his kin’s, one endowed with nobility, honor, purpose -- no. These humans have no clue. Acanorex clings on along with at least seventy-two of his kin to the slimy Huelvan oak that proved that the prophecy was right on this dark night. Along his body’s surface, the cool, tenacious ocean current resulting from the relentless forward energy of the dark vessel stirs within his soul an unshakeable sense of destiny. Surely, his at least seventy-two accompanying kin must feel that way, too. Acanorex clings on. No, these humans have no clue. The clueless humans that will actually get the rawest of the deals from all of this. The inevitable. They, he and his kin, they’re here just for pride. Not just, in this case, for the ride -- who said they couldn’t be territorial? But will the humans ever get a clue? By the time they do it might be too late.

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The darkness of the night does not help.