It was quiet. Truly quiet. The only sounds were the voices of the wind and of the waves against the shore.
How many days had passed since he had first seen this sight?
A familiar unease rose again in his mind—an inherent distrust of this motionless, eerily quiet world.
The wind grew steadily colder and the surface of the sea grew rough, spraying foam.
He leapt, catching the wind, then plunged back into the water with a loud splash. For a while he swam parallel to the shore. Now and then, his glistening, dark blue skin would disappear under the gray waves. Fighting his way through the reef, he made his way up a flat slab of rock protruding from the waves. There, he sprawled his exhausted body and blew out the water that had come down his alimentary tract. A hard wind caught the water he expelled, turning it into a fine plume of spray. He stuck his head underwater several times, shaking it to wash away the innumerable bits of grit and sand caught in his gills.
Ahead, the reef formed a complicated network of waterways. He had never ventured farther than this point. He had always assumed that even if he did he would just find more of the same gray ocean and hazy brown land.
And besides, he liked it here on this flat shelf. The reefs surrounding it held a plentiful number of the large-shelled crustaceans he favored, and he liked the view of the dry flats.
Supporting himself with his hind limbs, he raised his large, round eyes, searching.
The blowhole on his back sprayed a fine mist, making a dim rainbow in the air.
There it was.
A large, squarish shape far off in the middle of the plain. He had no idea what it was, only that it was wholly different from anything else in this barren land and seascape. He had no idea when it might have arrived, or who might’ve put or built it there. Its very existence was a deep mystery to him. The strange object projected a feeling that was unlike the deathly silence of this place—a sensation that one could never go too near it, let alone touch it. It thrilled all of his senses to terror.
And yet he found himself coming to this rocky shelf with increasing frequency.
Even though his primal fear of the object was unabated, the sight of it sitting there in the middle of the vast expanse of nothing excited him.
The wind blew harder and colder, blasting his wet body.
For a long time he sat, facing the flats.
Gradually, the sky and the land dimmed until there was no telling them apart, until the only thing he could see was the long foamy white line of the shore. Soon, that too was swallowed by the darkness, and his awareness of his surroundings extended only to the bracing wind and the thrashing waves against his back.
He looked around as though waking from a dream, then plunged back into the water.
With the coming of night, all the creatures of the ocean emerged from their holes, filling the heavy seas. Ahead of him, two large fish fought. Their bodies twisted, revolving like a wheel. He looked closer and saw that each held on to the other’s tail—each had in fact swallowed the other’s tail up to the rearmost fin. Swimming closer, he grabbed the two and tore off both their heads. The large skulls caught in his throat, but he swallowed them whole. He had just broken through the gathering swarm of small scavengers when he spotted something else: a bright orange spherical shape, approaching rapidly—almost on top of him already. Strong, supple limbs darted out, wrapping around his body in several places. His assailant was one of the many-legged mollusks he had seen living in these parts. He covered his head, narrowly avoiding a snap from the creature’s beak, and kicked at the water. Then he thrust his right shoulder against the mollusk, trying to shake it off. This was usually effective. But this time, the move did nothing to weaken the thing’s grip on his body. Changing tactics, he bit at the thick tentacle that clutched his head, trying to tear it off. This worked, and once he had the rest of the tentacles off his back and sides, he tore the baglike thing into three pieces and tossed them aside. The many-legged mollusks were not bad tasting; it would make a good meal for the tasseled annelids living along the seafloor.
He sped onward, passing through a dark channel to reach a familiar section of reef in the shadow of a kelp forest, where the beating of his gills slowed for the first time since he had been attacked. The pod that was his home lay on its side beneath the reef’s overhanging edge. The pod was covered with stony shells, and its top was wrapped in broadleaf seaweed, but the round hole through which he entered and exited had been worn to a polished silvery color by his passage. If its full mass were lifted from the silt where it lay, the pod would likely be as large as the towering reef above it, but he knew nothing of this.
He went through the opening and settled himself inside a double-walled cocoon within. At once, a rush of air bubbles erupted from the base of the cocoon, surrounding his body. The air clung to his dark blue skin, forming a beaded mantle. Something flowed deep into his body then. At the same time, something that had accumulated inside his body began to dissolve and flow away. He rested on his side at the bottom of the cocoon and began to sleep. He had never looked to see exactly what made the bubbles at the bottom of the chamber, but it made this place very special to him, and he would not have left it for anything.
The seafloor at night was filled with a cacophony of noises, both far and near, mingling and echoing all around him. Nestled in his pod, he was only dimly aware of the furious activity of the sleepless annelids and echinoderms and the movements of even simpler organisms through the water. He shifted once, then fell into a deep sleep. A passing fish with glowing green points of light along its belly poked its snout momentarily into the pod, but then, startled by something, it swiftly retreated into the black depths.