Chapter Text

Slowly, slowly, inch by inch, the shark dragged the limp body of the seal up and up and up, until the black water brightened to midnight, then royal, then bright green-blue. It turned left and right, rising and falling, seeking the right current. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the water heaved beneath it, throwing both it and the seal onto the rough, rocky beach.

Slowly, the shark began to shrink, a thin, pale human body emerging as the slick gray gave way to shivering pink, fins rounding and thickening into arms and legs.

Slowly, the boy stood, looking from the outside not tired so much as daunted—reluctant, dispirited, resigned. He glanced at the corpse of the seal beside him, then at the body of the shark lying a few feet away, seagulls already worrying its flesh. There were more bodies beyond that, each older and smaller than the last, the furthest reduced to a partial skeleton, half-washed into the sea.

Slowly, the boy bent over, rested his hands on the seal’s unmoving flank, and acquired its pattern, its essence.

Slowly, he straightened.

Pretty, the boy’s passenger whispered—softly, warily, like a child with parents both loving and angry, parents whose mood was not yet known. It was a word with special meaning, given the circumstances, but the passenger knew that, and knew that the boy knew that the passenger knew it, and thus the message was clear and open and honest, where it might otherwise have smacked of manipulation.

Slowly, the boy raised his head, and looked—at the porcelain sand, the coral-crag rocks, the dusting of brilliant green. At the white-capped waves, the deep azure sea, the lazily drifting clouds. It was alive, the scene—vibrantly alive, and yet calm as well—tranquil, as if the earth itself could breathe, and had let out a long, contented sigh.

Yeah, the boy agreed.

Good, the passenger asserted, more confidently this time.

Yeah.

Rest? the passenger suggested.

The boy tilted his head, seeming from the outside to think, though the passenger could see that there were no words, no images, no thoughts in the usual sense. Just a patient waiting-for-the-answer, as if the boy were watching a leaf drifting through the air to see which side it would land on.

Not yet, he said, after a time.

And he turned into the waves to continue his work.