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This story is from the far long before, back when the world was hard and solid and rough as a ragged shale around its rim.  The greatfathers and the greatmothers were all gone, and the wound left over from the ending of the first times was still sore and raw and bleeding.  All things bled from that ruinous hurt, and many bled all the way down, but a few still lived.  The peoples scraped their way back bit by bite and belly by claw and the world began to heal a little, and perhaps even to soften at their touch.  The green came back from its smouldering ruins and crawled farther still, spreading life for life to feed on wherever it went.  The peoples grew stronger and larger and began to recover a bit of their old place, and that was when the troubles began again. 

The first sign of warning came from near the water, where people that went to fish would start slipping away and vanishing.  Oh well, said the others.  Should be more careful.  But when it happened more often, and sometimes to the others that talked about being careful, well, that was just puzzling and worrying. 

The next signs were from farther inland, in the murkier forests and bogs.  There it was even less noticeable – a bog could suck you down right quick and you had to be fast to stop getting eaten there – but by now everyone was nervous, and the people there took note of when they started vanishing, and they were worried too. 

The last sign came when Grandmother Cru was out hunting for some meat, and she heard a rustling down in the forest.  Out she flew and caught something, and it was only after she wrestled it down and it wasn’t moving that she saw that it was one of the scuttling people, the ones with the many eyes.  She was surprised deeply with that, since all the scuttling people had died under the wounding that ended the first times. 

That’s strange, she told the peoples.  That is strange, they agreed.  And why are they hunting us?  Scuttling people didn’t do that. 

Well, scuttling people do now, said Grandmother Cru.  And she was right.  They were angry and bold now that they’d been discovered, and they came swarming out of the shallow pools and bogs they’d been hiding in, lots and lots of them.  Scuttling people were everywhere, and they were angry, too angry to talk, too angry to think.  The peoples fought, but they were weary instead of angry and worried instead of warlike, and soon there were no more left but the children and the grandmothers and grandfathers. 

This is bad, they said.  What’re we going to do?

Grandfather No had an idea.  He always had ideas.  We can’t fight them this way, he said.  So let’s find new ways.  We’re old, too old to fight fair.  Let’s go and learn and take what we need until we can fight. 

Good plan, said the others, and so the grandmothers and the grandfathers went their separate ways, all around and out and far.  They didn’t want to leave the children unprotected, so they dug a dark pit in the ground and stuffed them into it, then locked it with a fallen tree.  Stay put, they said, and stay quiet.  Now remember, don’t make any noise, for any reason, or the scuttling people will hear you.  The children were good children, and they did as they were told. 

Grandmother Cru journeyed far to the east, off into the sea.   The water looked oh so good and tempting, but she knew that she would drown if she walked in, so she looked along the beach.  It was covered in little mud droplets, all hiding bright-coloured, vain little sea-shells. 

Who here can swim? she called. 

Me!  Me!  Me! clamoured all the sea shells, shrill with importance.  Me!  Me!  I can do it!  They dug themselves to the surface and tumbled over each other in their haste to prove their claim.  Grandmother Cru just laughed and gathered them all up, and had a fine meal, cooking them all in the fire.  When it was through she took the charred-burnt shells and slapped them all over her body, and she had a fine suit of armour that made her stiff and sturdy and slow.  She took to the water and swam along, a bit portly and bumpy but altogether pleasant, and then she ran into a shark. 

What are you? asked the shark.  He was young and brave and very foolish. 

I’m me, replied Grandmother Cru sensibly. 

The shark was hot-tempered, and this annoyed him.  Don’t be rude, he yelled, or I’ll bite you clean in half.  My teeth are strong and sharp enough that no armour can stop them, not even that clanking coat of yours. 

My, my, they are sharp indeed, said Cru.  But I’ll bet they can’t bite me. 

If I can’t bite you in half, said the shark, then I’m as flat and toothless as a sea slug.  I’ll show you.  And the shark plucked up Grandmother Cru in his jaws and shook her all around like a little fish, teeth gnashing and clashing and jaws squeezing and biting.  He seized her so hard that she squished in the middle and stretched out both sides, until she was long and lean, but Grandmother Cru just laughed at him no matter how hard he tried.  He wriggled and shook and thrashed until every tooth fell out of his head, his mouth withered up, and he’d beaten himself flat against the water.  Finally he gave up in exhaustion, and Grandmother Cru took his teeth.  You aren’t a shark, but you aren’t quite a sea slug, she said.  I think you are something new, and I will call you a ray.  It is a good word. 

Grandmother Cru popped her new teeth into her toothless old maw and snapped them tight.  They were good strong teeth still, built for gnashing, and her new thin firm body was as muscled as anything.  She laughed and clacked and roared her way along the coast and into the rivers and swamps, and the scuttling people fled from her in fear, those that she did not tear apart and swallow. 

Grandfather Ter went wandering north.  There were many tall trees there, so tall that his old, old neck creaked to look up at them, and he walked so long and far that his feet hurt and he had to stop to rub them besides a creek.  There were dragonflies about the creek, just the thing to eat, but he had nothing to catch them with.  So he sat and thought and rubbed his arms and legs, cursing his old, brittle bones, and then he had a cunning idea.  He walked over to one of the tall trees and picked off as many branches as he could carry, and then he covered himself with them very carefully.  He held those branches up all day, arms straining, legs bowing close to the dirt with the effort, and at nightfall the dragonflies came to perch.  Grandfather Ter waited until they were asleep, then quick as lightning bit out at them one after another, swallowing the plump bodies and spitting out the gummy wings, which fluttered all over him.  Their legs were sharp as anything and stuck to the roof of his mouth, which hurt badly, and Grandfather Ter swore and jumped up and down, spitting and cursing as loud as he could until the moon nearly blanched.  He swore and hawked and cursed and jumped and as he did so more and more of the wings and branches were glued all over his stretched and strained thin old arms by his own spittle.  His bowed legs were stomped down to nubbins by the time he collapsed in exhaustion at dawn, and although the spikes in his mouth no longer pained him, they were stuck firm and never moving again, his yelling and their prodding turning his voice into a squawking croak. 

The sunlight dried Grandfather Ter as he dozed, and by midday he stood up and found it was too hard to walk, his legs had got so short and his wings-and-branches arms so heavy.  More dragonflies were above the stream, and when he hopped and leaped at them, hoping against hope, that was when Grandfather Ter found that he could fly. 

Up and up he flapped, needle-filled mouth snatching at food, and he cackled so hard he nearly choked.  His old thin bones floated on the winds and troubled him no more as he circled in the sky.  The scuttling people heard his voice from on high, and the sound where there had been silence filled them with worry.  He cackled and dived down at them, pecking with his needles, and they did not stay in his lands. 

Grandmother Cth took to the west, and she came to the sea as well, all around the other side, in different waters.  It seemed so very large that her knees shook to look at it, and they shook so hard that they nearly came loose.  Now don’t do that, she told them, and they hushed up some, which let her wander the beach in peace and quiet.  It was a big, broad sea out there, and she sat and thought on what to do for a long time.  A plan popped into her head at last, and she began to gather up pebbles and throw them into the water, splashing them about and making a dreadful noise.  Soon up came a big angry fish.  What are you meaning throwing those stones onto my reef? he asked angrily.  It’s brand-new as it is, thanks to the wounding, and now you go and throw stones on it.  What do you want anyways? 

Awfully sorry, said Grandmother Cth, but I can make it up to you.  How would you like to trade?  I’ve got a set of good legs here, and I’ll let you give them a try if you’ll let me see your thick hide. 

The big fish was still a bit angry, but he thought it over.  He’d always wanted to see the land above the seas for a bit, even a little bit, but the thought of leaving his precious water made him leery.  All right, he said, but only for a short time.  I’ll try your legs, and you can try my hide, but we’ll trade back after I’m finished, is that clear?

Yes indeed, said Grandmother Cth, and she was so eager to take off her legs that it made the big fish suspicious.  One more thing then, he said.  To make sure no one cheats and runs away, we’ll each keep ahold of something important.  I’ll keep my eggs, and you can keep your lungs. 

I’ll be fairer still, said Grandmother Cth.  We can share my lungs.  That way I can’t run away, and you don’t have to hold your breath while you walk.  This generosity put the big fish off his guard, and as he walked onto the land he did so in utter good faith.  However, after his fifth step in Grandmother Cth’s wobbling old knees, he knew something was wrong. 

Old woman, what have you done? he cried, but his only answer was a laugh as Grandmother Cth sped away over the waves.  She didn’t have eggs, but she would think of something, and she didn’t have lungs, but she could hold her breath.  The big fish hopped up and down the shore in a fury all night before limping inland to find somewhere wet where his skinless body wouldn’t dry out.  It was small comfort to find himself able to breath above and below the water, for his old worn-out kneecaps were too feeble to bear walking, and he had to hop everywhere he went.  He was bitterly unhappy, and called himself a frog, which he thought was a foolish person. 

Grandmother Cth had not a care in the world for it, and she swam the ocean main, boldly, far out into the warm and shallow expanses that the scuttling ones had called home.  Her snapping bill and gnashing teeth drove them away in fear, and she had little care for her missing legs – she had hands and feet to paddle with, as well as her strong long tail. 

Grandfather No walked south, and he walked farthest.  Off into the deep desert he marched, old grandfather No, and he thought as he walked, bolt upright, muscles firmed.  The sun baked his skin firm and painted it strange hues, the walking stiffened his legs so that they were warped straight as a line, his body itself wavered and shrank to almost tiny size under the sky’s gaze, but on Grandfather No marched.  He ate young lizards as they basked on rocks and caught them as they slipped under rocks, his bleached and firmed tendons and muscles growing snap-fast to grab and long and delicate to probe.  The energy and warmth of his prey entered him, and he grew younger and more vigorous with each life he stole, a quick and lithe predator.  His movements grew jerky and darting, and he walked until one day he stood alone in the desert, mouth empty of flesh, and surveyed the horizon from atop a single broken rock. 

I am what I am meant to be, said Grandfather No.  All of this will be mine one day, I think. 

He walked home then, and ate little on the trip, yet remained as lively and rapid as ever.  The scuttling people never heard his three-toed footsteps coming pit-a-pat upon the red dirt towards them, never saw his fanged snout approaching their delicate eyes, but they knew those places he roamed were not theirs, and they left in great fear. 

All of this took quite some time, and the defeat of the scuttling people with many eyes took longer still.  By the time the last of them had vanished the grandmothers and grandfathers had nearly forgotten where the children had been left, and had had many new children of their own.  They called and called and called, so loudly that it rang across all the world and deep into the burrow of the children, but their voices had grown strange and unfamiliar to their ears, and they were good children, and made not a sound in replay. 

I can’t find them, wailed Grandmother Cth, splashing in the seas.  I traded my legs for flippers, land for sea. 

I can’t find them, rumbled Grandmother Cru, drifting through the swamps, I am not meant for such long walks, armoured as I am. 

I can’t find them, squawked Grandfather Ter, flitting through the trees, I cannot sit upon the ground again, and I am too high up to see them. 

I will find them, hissed Grandfather No, padding across the land. 

That is good, the others said. 

Grandfather No took many more steps before he found the children’s place, some on top of each other, but he did find them, following his snout.  He opened it up with his delicate hands and found that the children were many now.  Alone in the cold they’d made strange soft stuff from their skins to keep the warmth, and they had had their own children long, long ago, feeding them on milk.  They did not recognize him, and hissed and snapped, and Grandfather No felt a coldness arise in his warm-beating heart as he looked upon them. 

If you will not know your elders as such, he said, you will know them as your betters.  I and my children, and their children beyond will teach you this lesson until you know us again.  He fell upon the children and drove them deep into their burrows, and killed and ate several before he returned. 

The children are not our children any longer, he told the grandmothers and grandfathers.  They have gone from our sight.  And the others mourned for the loss, but not for too long, for they had children of their own to look after now, and Grandfather No the most.  

Copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor. 

Back in the Good Old Days, in the woods, there was a poor woodcutter.  There was nothing noteworthy or unique about this, and he died of old age a poor woodcutter. 
This story isn’t about him. 

 His brother was also a poor woodcutter, because when you’re living in a shack in the middle of a forest there’s very little else you can do.  All of his possessions in the world were an old, battered axe, a cupboard (typically bare), and a dented tin water jug.  He would’ve added his little daughter and wife to the list (this WAS about six hundred years ago), but his wife would’ve objected, and very few things in his life that she objected to lasted long.  It was largely because of this that he spent most of his time out in the woods, where there was lots of fresh air that was untainted by the voice of someone yelling at him.  He would make up dull songs to pass the time as he chopped, sing them very badly, then become miserable each new day when he realized he’d forgotten his song and would have to compose a new one, which would take just as much time and give him the sneaking suspicion that he’d managed to copy all the worst bits of the last.  It was not ideal. 
Then, one day when he was mid-verse, mid-swing, and trying to think of something that rhymed with “forsooth,” the woodcutter heard a strange sound: someone crying.  More specifically, someone that wasn’t him – he’d long ago developed a soft, stifled sob.  Pushing through a nearby thicket, curiosity, overtaking his mopiness, he found the source of the crying: an old woman standing in her garden with her back to him, cradling something. 
“Is there something wrong, old woman?” asked the woodcutter. 
The woman faced him without turning around, and that was when he knew he was dealing with a witch.  She didn’t look sad either, just furious, and it was then that the woodcutter noticed that she was cutting up an onion.  Whoops. 
“You’re trampling my garden!” she shrieked, and she was right; there the woodcutter was, up to his knees in the beans, his thighs in the peas, and his buttocks in the lettuce.  Those were some mighty big lettuces. 
“I’m sorry,” he said, the paralytic fear rendering him insincere.  “I didn’t mean it!  I’ll pay you back, I promise!”
“What does a poor woodcutter like you have besides your life?” demanded the witch, fixing him with the most evil of her eyes (the left one – it had a slightly misshapen cornea, and she squinted a lot with it). 
The woodcutter’s mind raced faster than it had in his life, and as most things tend to do when this happens, it sprung a gasket.  “My wife!” he said. 
“Nice try.  I’m doing you no favours for the ills you’ve just given me.  What do you have that I’d want?”
“My axe!”
“A battered piece of junk!”
“My cupboard!”
“Made out of sticks and branches!”
“My jug!”
“Not worthy to water weeds with!”
“My home!”
The witch jerked her thumb over her back, at the rather tall, ominous, and altogether splendid tower behind her.  The woodcutter’s heart sank.
“Your life or nothing is all you’ve given me.  Anything else, or do I take your heart here and now?”
The woodcutter realized he had one thing he hadn’t named.  “My daughter!” he said, skin shrivelling in shame at the lengths its owner would go to save it. 
“Ahh, there’s a good coward.  Yes, your daughter would do nicely.  A girl around to fetch and mend and carry is worth more than a coward’s heart, I think.  Best go fetch her now, before I grow impatient.”
The woodcutter left for home, feeling miserable and impotent.  “Woe is me.  And us,” he said to his wife, “for I have promised our daughter to a witch’s service in exchange for my life.  Hand her over.”
His wife looked at him like he was the world’s biggest idiot.  “What are you, the world’s biggest idiot?” she demanded.  “We don’t have anything we can’t take with us except the cupboard, and witches are frail old ladies.  Let’s just leave.”
So they did.  The witch was grumpy about it, but they were younger and faster than she was and before the day was done they were far away from her tower.  They’d got away scot-free and never saw that witch or any other ever again. 
This story isn’t about any of them either. 

 The woodcutter and his wife and daughter found a nicer, less witch-inhabited chunk of forest that was within spitting distance of a cool, clear river whose brook was so pretty and pristine that the woodcutter found himself describing it as “babbling” without intending to every time he mentioned it.  Also, they were near a small village full of people that rather didn’t mind having someone cut wood for them, which was a great improvement on the woodcutter’s old business model, which was doing it to get away from his wife and make the odd crude cupboard. 
Anyways, the daughter grew up.  And as she grew, she grew beautiful, which mystified both her parents because neither of them were exactly handsome, to put it lightly.  “Must be your mother’s side of the family,” opined the woodcutter, which earned him a smack.  She wasn’t just a pretty face, either – she wasn’t a stranger to hard work, and besides all the chores she did at home she also handled sewing and laundry for a few people in the village in exchange for favours, food, and the odd bit of knicknackery. 
It all was going so well when the dragon showed up.  The first thing the daughter knew of it was when her father came back from the village tavern in a frightful tizzy.  “It burned down all the crops and its breath blighted the soil,” he wailed.  “It ate up four of Cooper’s oxen and one of Smith’s horses, and it’s napping on the road out of town right now!  Our only hope is to keep it happy until someone can make it to the king and tell him to send help.”
“How do you do that?” asked the daughter, who was interested in all this. 
“Virgin sacrifices,” the woodcutter explained, moodiness wandering over his face as though it had lost the map. 
“Why?”
“It works, don’t ask me why.  We drew lots and Fletcher’s sending his daughter out tonight.  I just hope the messenger’s fast – we aren’t exactly rolling in young womenfolk around here.”
“What about boys?” asked the daughter.
“They don’t count,” explained the woodcutter, lamely, and he took up his axe and left as soon as possible.  Although the daughter felt vaguely pleased at seeing the opposite gender dismissed entirely for once, she somehow felt that in this case it wasn’t as convenient as it could’ve been. 
Fletcher’s daughter, it transpired, had sharper ears than her father had known, and by the time he’d gone to find her she was secluded in a barn with Tanner’s eldest son, busily removing her qualifications.  There was a good deal of shouting and shaming all around when they were discovered, but as she pointed out (rather smugly), there was just nothing to be done of it.  By the time the men of the village had got around to drawing lots again (this time it was old Miller’s youngest), the dragon had woken up, eaten Smith’s other horse and all of Shepherd’s sheep, and passed out again on the road. 
Fletcher’s daughter wasn’t shy about spreading the word, and by next evening old Miller’s youngest was also disqualified and rather smug about it.  The men of the village cursed her and youth today in general, drew lots, and cursed again the next eve, when Tanner’s daughter followed suit. 
And so it went, day by day.  A (female) virgin was chosen, a (female) virgin abused the rather obvious loophole, the men of the village cursed their daughters and lack of pattern recognition jointly, the dragon ate more livestock, and the lots were drawn again.  By the tenth day and night there were no more candidates of either sex readily available, except for one.  The woodcutter’s daughter’s lot was chosen, and this time the men of the village didn’t tell her until the evening had come.  Or rather, the woodcutter didn’t, and it was less because of sadistic cunning and more a matter of working up the nerve to inform her in front of her mother. 
“I’m awfully sorry, sweet-pea,” he explained as he was menaced with his own axe, “but it’s you or nice Mr. Shepherd’s last sheep, and he would be very upset about that.”
At this the woodcutter’s wife moved to inconvenience him, but she was stopped by her daughter.  “Don’t worry, mum,” she said.  “I’ll be fine.”
The woodcutter’s wife examined her daughter carefully, face expressionless.  “You sure about this, pumpkin?” she asked, dead serious.
“Yes.”
A forthright nod.  “Good girl then.  You go do what you can.”
So the woodcutter’s daughter did.  She took her father’s dented tin jug and his battered old axe, and she stopped at the home of the woman who was interested in herbs, and she took herself and her jug over to Mr. Shepherd’s house and strongarmed him into giving her his last sheep in exchange for three years of owed payment for doing his filthy laundry.  There was much gnashing of teeth as she left on her way down to the road out of town. 
The dragon was still sleeping, burping gently now and then, and the area was foul-smelling from its breath and feces.  Resolutely ignoring this, the woodcutter’s daughter killed the sheep with the axe, clumsily hacked its gut open (cursing her father’s reluctance to replace the old implement), dumped the contents of the tin can inside, and walked away to hide behind a nearby thicket. 
The noises the dragon made over the next half hour weren’t pretty, but few things are in the initial onset of the ingestion of several pounds of concentrated wolfsbane.  It wheezed and gurgled and moaned, and when the woodcutter’s daughter wandered out to check it was lying on its side, spewing inflammatory toxins from both ends and filling the ditches with foul-smelling embers. 
It was about then that the prince rode up on his horse, lance in hand, shield ready, and found them both.  He was quite confused when the dragon didn’t fight back as he speared its heart, but sorted it all out quickly by deciding that he’d done everything.  He’d even rescued a beautiful damsel, who protested a bit when he scooped her up onto the horse, but not too much after he agreed to meet her parents first before talking over the marriage question. 
This story probably isn’t about them either. 

Some years passed, and the woodcutter’s daughter was technically a queen and the prince a king.  They had three sons, one after another, and they were pretty good on the whole.  None of them that good-looking, which puzzled the parents a little since they were both considered such. 
“Must be your side of the family,” said the prince, who got swatted for it. 
Anyways, that didn’t matter.  The boys were healthy, happy, strong, and exceedingly boisterous and loud.  Their ages were twenty, nineteen, and eighteen when the trouble came.  One late summer day the king was out on horseback, inspecting the countryside, when a crow landed on his shoulder.  The king nearly shot out of the saddle in surprise, the horse bucked, and he went flying, waking up with a babbling mouth and addled mind.  This irked and alarmed the woodcutter’s daughter greatly, because she knew something that was more than bad luck when she saw it.  She called for the palace magician, and with a lot of talking and thinking they worked it out between them where to look for a cure. 
“Boys,” she said, addressing her three sons, “you’re going to go cure your father.  Try to make it back before winter sets in.  And head south-south-east.”
They promised they’d be back as soon as they could, took the best horses from the stable, some armour, a sword apiece, and plenty of supplies, and were off down the road by noon. 
“Let’s split up,” suggested the youngest.  “We can cover more ground that way.”  They all agreed on this, and the eldest brother headed down the first fork in the road they came across with a fare-thee-well.  His trip was very uneventful for the most part (the king had been pretty good at his job, and the lands were quiet), and sadly found himself unable to locate anything more than a few women who were interested in herbs, all of whom told him that scrambled brains needed something a bit stronger than herbs.  He did get to enjoy some excellent cups of tea, though. 
At the next fork in the road the middle brother turned away with a wave.  His path took him right up to the edge of the kingdom, and after venturing a bit farther he was accosted by a large band of knights and unceremoniously booted out of the domain by a king with an ill temper and a long memory, who distinctly recalled who had hidden frogs in his privy when he was on a diplomatic visit twelve years ago. 
The youngest brother had a bit of a shorter trip than his siblings – the road ended in a very small and very dull village not far from the fork where his elder brother had left him alone.  The only thing that was interesting about it was that it had a very large and cracked dragon skull above the door to the tavern (missing most of its teeth), which he inquired about. 
“The king did that,” said the woodcutter, who had never seen any of his grandchildren before and was welcoming the opportunity to have a pint or two on someone else’s expense.  “Back in the day.  Nice of him to let us keep the skull.”  His voice grew conspiratorial and quiet.  “And I think it’s still got a mite of magic in it.  Old Smith rubbed it for luck one day and the very next day he bought himself a new horse on the cheap.  Bit of a windfall, that.  And I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve had a close call with my axe that could’ve turned nasty if it weren’t for the tooth I’ve got.”
The youngest son examined the tooth, which the woodcutter wore as a sort of crude necklace, and conceded that it was very impressive.  “Can I borrow it?” he asked. 
“What for?” asked the woodcutter, and he listened to the story.  “Ill tidings,” he said when the tale was done, secretly relishing the opportunity to say the words in context.  “Anything to give my daughter’s husband a hand.”  The woodcutter thought for a moment.  “Ten golden coins.”
The youngest son had to pawn his horse (Old Smith was happy to have a full team again, even if one was fourteen years older than the other) and walk all the way home on foot, but he was proud.  His brothers had come home before he did, and together they walked in to speak with the woodcutter’s daughter. 
“I have failed,” said the eldest son, remorsefully. 
“I have also failed,” said the middle son, bitterly. 
“I’ve got this,” said the youngest son, helpfully, and gave his mother the dragon-tooth pendant. 
The woodcutter’s daughter examined it closely.  “Thank you,” she said.  “You’ve all succeeded.”
The sons were slightly nonplussed, and then the woodcutter’s daughter explained that the king had been under a lot of stress for a while now, and a bit of a break with someone else running the kingdom and no loud children underfoot had done him a world of good.  In fact, he’d agreed to take ruling duty in shifts with her, and was currently out back playing a happy game of lawn bowls with several of the more energetic dukes.  The princes were a little annoyed, but consoled themselves with the knowledge that at least they’d gotten some fresh air and their father might have a bit more time to spend with them. 

There wasn’t a story about any of them.  But they were well-off enough without it.

Copyright 2009, Jamie Proctor. 

(I had something up for today, but then I realized I couldn’t post it because I have to put it into a short story contest and lose first.  So enjoy a half-length bit instead).

Once the thrill and overpowering demands of instinct had faded away from her, Small-five was near-frightened by the new world around her.  The deepest waters she had ever swum had been the reef-rifts, explored with close caution and worriment in her every motion.  Now she hurried over empty blue whose extent she couldn’t even begin to comprehend and whose exploration she would be unable to undergo, even if she desired it or had the time.  The Fiskupids were small, but they were ceaselessly energetic.  She had swum for something like two days straight at a pace that never slowed below a swift cruise, and they showed no signs of stress or strain.  Small-five’s disadvantage was an unfortunate side effect of her near-starvation on the reef – where muscle should’ve bulged, it merely pulsed. 

Still, she was optimally placed to correct this difficulty.  She swam and ate and ate and swam, surrounded by a seemingly endless feast of the Fiskupids and their predators alike, untroubled by any needs save those of growth.  At first she watched the Raskljens warily, but when she realized that they saw no need to hunt her when surrounded by so much easier prey she became less cautious, and by the time ten days had passed and the Fiskupid schools finally slowed their relentless pace she swam by most them as casually as they did her.  Except for the larger ones, who still appeared to be slightly too interested in her whenever she saw them. 

Other hanger-ons came in time.  Slow-moving, stretched-out Skurromesh, elongated and entwined bodies formed of a mated male and female wrapped around one another’s forms.  The disturbing Fjiloj – her first sighting of them, from a distance, filled her with useless hope; the shine, the glow, for a brief moment made her think of her sisters.  But when she drew closer she saw the colours and tones were all wrong; this was not the bright and strong glowshine of her sisters, but something wrong, soft and ghostly and flickering, uncontrolled, unfocused, unreal.  It bobbed in the water gently, translucent and wrong, and she had the sense to back away, confusion saving her from the whip-strong tendrils that spread out towards her with the speed of a darting Verrineeach, nearly invisible in the water.  What appeared to be a jellylike sack of glowing innards a short distance away was housed inside the powerfully muscled frame of a bony predator, lean and savage, but thankfully slow-swimming.  Small-five fled, and was wary of all light for a time, even to the point of dimming her own to almost unnoticeable levels. 

Stranger still was another wanderer, one whose name she never learned.  It was nothing more than a large-ish stretch of cloudy, murked water, but it held together in defiance of dispersion, and somehow moved against the current if it willed it.  It followed the vast shoal for some days, and creatures too close to it tended to vanish without warning.  Small-five never saw what happened to them, but that was enough to make her watch it closely.  It vanished as suddenly and conspicuously as it arrived one day, along with a large and belligerent Raskljen that Small-five had long had to avoid.  A reminder that not all dangers were dangers to her alone, or incapable of working to her benefit.  Still, a relief to see it gone. 

Of all of the denizens of the shoal, those that unsettled her the greatest were her own kind.  After the attack above the chasm, she had no interest in making acquaintances – when she saw glowshine in the distance, she shut down her illumination and fled, and she didn’t light up until some time had passed without so much as a glimmer passing her eyes. 

The Fiskupid’s slowing seemed connected to the temperature.  Small-five had taken time to notice it herself, but they were in cooler waters than the location of the relatively warm reefcolony she’d grown up in.  It had no immediate effects on her person besides making her appreciate (in some deepened corner of her brain) her added fat, but it had an effect on her surroundings, like it or not.  Not all of the new denizens of the open ocean she saw were alien solely because of habitat – the Filijoj would’ve been sluggish and slower had it ventured far enough north to join the shoal in its earlier days.  Its relatives that dwelt in that particular part of the world were smaller, faster, less aggressive, and far more wide-roaming.   As new inhabitants of the shoal arrived, others departed: the few Skurromesh that had trailed in its wake to pick up leavings fell behind for good, both exhausted, sated, and reaching the ends of their temperature comfort zones. 

What made this significant were the Ooliku.  The Fiskupids were on the first and greatest journey of their lives.  Small-five, the Raskljen, the Fjiloj, and the other, stranger things were there to exploit it.  The Ooliku were coming home.  The Fiskupids were merely a convenient food source for them to latch onto as they travelled, and if they were removed they would still constitute a mighty shoal on their own, albeit one barely a tenth of a fifth of a sixth of the size.  They were moving with purpose of their own, a return to the bottom of the world, to the ice and cold and freezing black water that swarmed with nutrients and life.  Their paths would diverge soon, and they would depart, bellies filled with nutrition and packed into fat that would have to last them the last and longest step of their great journey.  Under the poles they would couple and breed and die and feast, only the hardiest returning to the reefcolonies to spray their eggs in warmer waters. 

Small-five knew none of this, of course.  All she knew was that the Ooliku were getting heftier, more aggressive, and clustering tighter together.  That, and even the subadults had swollen into burlier adults by now.  Preying upon any of them was now distinctly unfeasible – their beaks were sharp and they had no reserves whatsoever about pre-emptively driving off anything they thought might harm them, flying at anything from the largest Raskljen to Small-five herself in large mobs.  The one predator that seemed to successfully stump them were the Fjiloji – more than once Small-five watched an Ooliku curiously swim all too close to that soft sinister glow, then jerk and die midwater before being brought to indistinct mouthparts, ripped, and swallowed. 

Their departure was still a shock.  One evening, as Small-five stirred from her torpor (swimming while resting was a new skill she’d acquired), she noticed that there wasn’t a single Ooliku left.  Every single one had extracted itself from the shoal, presumably formed up into a separate school, and left for the pole, taking a substantial chunk of the shoal’s predator population with them.  Not that it in any way reduced her perceptions of its size – the main change she noticed was that she didn’t have to carefully watch and brood over every lunge into a dense mass of prey, worrying about coming face-first into a clump of surly adult Ooliku.  The sole remaining predators she knew of within the school were only the very largest of the Raskljen, and even they had gradually vanished, replaced by smaller, sleeker cousins less than a third again her body weight, that had no interest in any prey but the Fiskupids, darting into their densest swarms and devouring them ten-at-a-time.  For the first time in what felt like forever, she had utterly nothing to fear.  This newfound carefreeness backfired on her after what seemed to be a very short time, when she swam through a cloud of prey (it was impossible to remember a time when she hadn’t been surrounded by free-swimming food and suddenly found her eyes full of startled glowshine, her own and those of three others.  That they were slightly larger than she was registered through the shock, but her immediate reaction after that had switched from flight to sheer terror-paralysis.  Not that she was in a position where flight would do her any good – she would never be able to move fast enough to outrun them from less than a proboscis-length away. 

They hovered there, all four of them.  Glowshine codes flickered back and forth between the three sisters, too quick and complex for Small-five to grasp, variations on themes that she and her sisters had only just begun to grasp before their separation.  But no hostility, no stabbing proboscises, no angry flares of light.  Wariness, yes, but strange codes and signals that might have been curiosity.  They were older than her assailants had been, as was she – practically juveniles, nearing full sapience. 

Flicker-pulse-three-point-irregular-twinkle? flashed out the largest of the three sisters. 

Small-five watched without comprehension.  It didn’t feel like a name, but it felt impatient. 

The pattern repeated itself.  She didn’t understand it.  Small-five-point-burst-of-light, she flashed.  It was the only thing she could think of that was intelligible.  That was what she was, and she didn’t know anything else. 

It certainly got their attention.  More flashes and flickers and maybe she was just guessing off of murky memories of her own sisters, but she could see something of interest there. 

Dim-glow-bright-two-point-flare.  A name.  The other two lit up: All-fin-sparkle and Nine-point-glimmer. 

Names.  Names for all of them.  She’d forgotten what this was like.  With others swimming near here. 

They turned to move away, and Small-five saw the lines of light crawl down Dim-glow from snout to tail, the call to swim, to fall together.  Something old, something familiar, delivered by someone new. 

Small-five fell in, unsure and uncomprehending, but grateful and with an odd budding of hope inside her.  She hadn’t swum with others in a long, long time.

I was stirring the stew on the firepit when I heard the knock. 

At first I dismissed it as the wind, and did nothing.  With the second rap, I thought of it as coincidence, and stirred all the harder, as if to banish it forcibly from thought.  With the third, I feared it was a bear, come in the snowstorm by the drifting smell of cookery, and I snatched up my spear and hurried to the doorway.  By the time the fourth thump came, I was shoving the rough driftwood hatch open, feeling it grind against the iced and slick snow-walls. 

The figure beyond was no bear – far too small, too slight, even for a cub – and it jumped in surprise.  Bulky, upright, small, dark in colour, with odd face markings, and textures that just didn’t match up.  Its forelimbs were held upright, next to its skull, and it was making the strangest noises, a complicated cacophony that was half-lost in the blizzard. 

I blinked as I listened.  They sounded familiar.  What were they…. words.  Yes, that was it.  Words.  Were they English?  I wasn’t quite sure.  I’d taken up talking to myself a long time ago, a very long time ago, but this was strange.  It was all too fast in some places, too slow in others, and some of the bits didn’t sound like other bits.  Too much all at once.  And if those were words – English words? – then this must be a human.  Another human.  Did I look like that?  Strange indeed. 

It had stopped its words, and was watching me.  Warily, probably.  I did have a spear pointed at it.  Did I need to do that now?  We had a lot in common – species, desire to avoid the cold, and probably hungry.  I remembered the hunger quite well now. 

“Come in,” I said, and I let the spear down (gratefully – it was heavy).  “Stew.”

It was magical, watching that.  I said some words and moved my arm and all of a sudden it wasn’t frightened anymore.  Then we both walked inside, just like that.  Can you believe that?  Some words and all of that happens.  Amazing. 

My guest liked the stew, although it took me a while to figure this out.  It was still hard to understand it.  “Slower,” I said.  “Slower.”  It would nod, blink, eat some stew, and then start over again, still wrong in some odd way that threw its ever breath of air out of joint with my mind.  Still, we made progress, and by the end of the meal we could understand each other half-decently as we sat on my furs next to the firepit.  It had laid its gun to one side, out of the way.  It looked much more complicated than mine, and seemed well-looked-after.  It probably even still worked. 

The first thing it asked after we’d established this was what was in the stew. 

I thought for a while.  What was the word?  Ah, yes.  “Mice.”

It looked surprised.  “That’s a lot of mice.  How many?”

I shrugged – another thing I hadn’t done for a long time.  It came much more easily than conversation.  “Lots?  Can’t remember.  Collected them before winter.”

“Cached them, huh?  Are you that hard up for food?”

Another shrug, and something I thought I recalled mother saying once.  “Every little bit… helps.”

The guest laughed, and the sound was the most alien I’d heard from it yet.  It seemed too loud.  “Hah, yes.  Thank you for your mouse stew, stranger – and you shouldn’t stay a stranger, for giving me somewhere to hide from that snowstorm.”  He stretched out his back, rubbing at the base of the spine.  “”What’s your name?”

That particular detail came to me more easily than anything else I’d struggled with.  “John.”

“It’s good to meet you, John,” said my guest.  “Tim.”

I thought for a moment.  “Yes?” I asked. 

It shook its head.  “No, sorry.  I’m Tim.  My name is Timothy.”  He – that was a man’s name, it must be a man – looked at me in a way that I thought was odd.  “When was the last time you saw someone else out here, John?”

“Not sure.  Hard to keep track of time.”  A phrase leaked back into my head.  “’Land of the Midnight Sun.’  Hard to say.  A long time.”

“How?  You can’t be more than a few days north from Fairbanks.”

I stared at him, and he must have sensed my blankness.  “Fairbanks?  You know, Fairbanks, Alaska?”

“Alaska?”  That was maybe the strangest word I’d heard yet. 

“Alaska.  The United States of America.” 

All the words in the sentence I understood, yet together they meant nothing.  I shook my head.  “No.”

Insofar as I could read expressions – there were so many muscles moving on his face, all dancing and jumping – he looked very… something.  I’m not sure what.  “How do you not know that?  You’re not native, so you sure as hell weren’t born out here, and you don’t even know that you’re in the state of Alaska?  You’ve never heard of the US?”

More sensible words that added up into senselessness.  “No.  I haven’t.” 

He – Tim, yes that was it – slumped, and his body language spoke to me more than his face had.  I remembered something now.  “You got lost?” I prompted. 

He nodded.  “Yes, and I’m damned ashamed to admit it.  Flew north out of Fairbanks and landed on a lake, was just planning on a little bit of winter hunting.  Storm came up out of nowhere, faster than I could blink – not a single warning or hint.  It was there, I was stuck in a whiteout, and by the time it cleared up enough for me to move the plane was gone.  Damned if I know how, but the temperature’d dropped like a stone.  So I struck out east, towards where I’d seen some trees on landing, – get any shelter you can, you know – must’ve got turned around, kept walking to keep breathing, and then I stumbled into your house.  Probably saved my life.  Thanks again, by the way.”

“You are welcome.”  Old memories were thawing inside my head, bit by bit, revealing frail and chilly contents.  “On the lakeshore,” I asked, hunch growing stronger, “was there a rock?  A point?”

“A what?” he asked, puzzled. 

“A rock, a point.”  I thought over my words again.  “A rock on a point.  A big rock.  A big round rock.  On a point,” I clarified.

Tim got that strange look on his face again – probably confusion – and then it melted into something else.  “Yes.  Yes, there was.  I tied the plane to a tree right next to it.  When the snow calmed down, it was gone.  Just gone – not a trace of the line left.  Or the tree.”

Certainty filled me, the same feeling I got when I had a deer standing in my sight, bow in hand, with the wind at my back.  “You moved,” I said.

He looked confused again.  “No, I didn’t.  I’m not an idiot, I stayed right where I was and hunkered down next to the rock.”
“No, no, no,” I said, firmly.  I smacked my right hand on the floor near his foot, making him jump.  “You were here,” I said.  My other hand came down hard, across from its brother.  “I am here.  The snow came, and then –“ I swept my right hand over to meet its brother “–it brought you here.  To me.”

“Forgive me for saying this, John,” he said, almost slowly enough to be clear and sound for once, “but you aren’t making any sense.”

“I got lost too,” I said.

There was a long silence then.  I used the time to clean out the rest of the stewpot, seeing that he’d had his fill.  It was a good stewpot, made out of soapstone.  It had lasted for a long time, but was scarcely my first.  With each replacement, I’d gotten better at the fiddly bits of the carving, and by now they were quite pleasant to look at. 

“So you’re saying,” said Tim, as I scraped out the last of the meat – almost as if he’d been waiting for it – “that you got lost, in the same place, and it brought you here, and now the same thing happened to me?”

I nodded.  It had been a long time since I’d done that, and it felt good.  My sharing of the stewpot had garnered something quite useful after all. 

“Tell me why I should believe you, and not write you off as an old survivalist who’s spent too much time with no one to talk to but caribou.”

“Caribou?” I asked. 

“You can’t honestly not know about caribou.  They walk past here every six months!  Your spoon is made from one of their antlers!” 

I looked at the handle of the spoon, and recognition came.  “The deer?”  Caribou was an odd word.  Why rename a deer?

Tim’s movements were growing more jerky and impulsive.  I must’ve been frustrating him.  “It doesn’t matter.  What are you trying to tell me?  That the snowstorm took me to… never-land or something?  Narnia?  Make sense or show me some proof.”

I looked down into the stewpot, thoughts bubbling and hissing inside my skull.  It had been a very long time, but I believed I knew something that would make him change his mind. 

“Wait,” I said.  I set the stewpot to one side and arose, then began to rummage through the big woven-branch hamper I kept my things in.  There was something in there that couldn’t be found where he came from, something very different from the old, younger place that I’d been in before I came here.  At least, I thought it was. 

It was at the bottom of the hamper, because it was very heavy.  I used it as part of my sledge when I packed up home and moved.  With some difficulty, I pried it loose and bundled it into my arms, then brought it to him.  “Here,” I said, and placed it upon the ground.”
“Polar bear skull,” he said immediately.  “Big one –“ and then he stopped, and began to touch and examine it.  I let him look, and waited.  Time was long, and we had much of it. 

At last he raised his eyes from my skull, and spoke words again.  “This isn’t a normal bear,” he said. 

I thought back again to those long-ago times, and recalled the bears I’d seen.  Were they normal?  “No,” I agreed, deciding that they might’ve been.  At the time. 

“It’s too big.  Much too big.  And this isn’t a fossil.  Either you killed the biggest bear ever to live in the history of the world, John – and not more than a few days from Fairbanks – or you’re not making up everything you’re telling me.  And I can’t think why you would.  One way or the other, something’s wrong here.”  He was having trouble keeping his eyes from my sledge-base, they kept alighting upon it, like a nervous mother bird unwilling to leave its nest.  “And of course, there’s the extra eye sockets.”

Bears with four eyes had extra eyes?  I’d forgotten that – was he really telling the truth?  “More proof?” I asked, mind already feverishly ransacking those old memories once more, comparing them to the contents of my home. 

“Please.”

The hamper was carefully sorted through, and other tokens and emblems came out.  My knife, carved from one of the teeth of the whales that I’d found stranded on a shore, long ago – a score or so, I recalled, and I’d never seen anything like them since.  The furs we squatted on became an example – the woolly pelt from a calf of one of the rhinoceroses that roamed near here in the late winter, claimed from its owner after I found it dead in a snowdrift.  Normal things, strange things, and each examined and explained haltingly to this odd man, with odd words. 

There was another very long silence after that.  It was very strange – it felt misshapen, unpleasant.  Not at all like normal. 

“So it’s never-land then?” he asked after a time. 

“I do not understand,” I said. 

“Narnia then?  Where am I?  You’ve got mutant bears and giant killer whales and some kind of woolly rhinos.  Maybe you’re a head case with one weird trophy, but with three?  This is too much.  What the hell is this place?”
“I do not,” I said carefully, “understand.”

Tim was staring at me again.  “You’re nuts.  I don’t care how long you’ve been stuck out here, you’re crazy.  What.  Is.  This.  Place?”  He was standing up now, talking down at me, nearly shouting, and I wasn’t comfortable with it.  “What’s outside – what’s out there?”

Oh.  That made more sense.  I thought about my answer carefully. 

“Cold,” I said.  “All the cold.  Ever.”

He stood there for a time, at least until I passed into sleep.  I do not know if he did the same. 

In the morning, my guest was moving before I awoke, examining and preparing his strange gun, organizing his backpack.  I knew preparations for departure when I saw them, and asked what he planned. 

“I’m heading back where I came from,” he said.  “I got… wherever here is from the rock.  I might as well head back there.  No offence, John, but I don’t want to end up like you.  However long you’ve been here, or half of it, is too long.” 

Would the place send him away?  I wasn’t sure.  Had I tried?  Maybe once.  Couldn’t remember.  “Good luck,” I said.  It seemed fair enough – the right thing, surely?  I wouldn’t diminish my own luck by giving him any.  Probably. 

He slung the gun into some sort of container on his back.  I thought I remembered doing that once, and felt an odd twinge of nostalgia.  Tim had started talking again, too many words, too fast, and I dragged my attention back to it. 

“… for the food, and the shelter,” he said.  “If I can’t get back the way I came, I guess I’ll strike out south and see if it gets any warmer.”  What an odd idea.  “Anything you can tell me about the land that way?”
“Cold.  This time of year, not much deer.  Some wolves.  Then, trees.  Lots.”

He sighed heavily.  “More good news.  Could be worse.”  He held out his hand, and I stared at it for a moment before remembering handshakes.  It felt very strange, and quite soft – disturbingly so, like a maggot.  I had to resist the urge to wipe my fingers on my coat.  We emptied out the entrance, pushing back and tunnelling out the snow.  My house was a little lump in a great snow-dune, barely worth noting. 

“If I make it through, I’ll tell someone you’re out here.”  He looked very small against all the white, and I was sure he knew it.  ”Wherever here is.  They won’t think I’m too crazy – Tim White’s not local, but he’s known well enough for a bit of trust.”

Tim was a colour?  Oh, yes.  Second names – last names, that was it.  What was mine again?  It wasn’t a colour.  They were too long and bulky to use everyday, but I was sure I knew it, somewhere. 

“I am fine,” I reassured him.  It was true.  I thought.  What else was there?  Wherever he was from, it had too many words. 

“Suit yourself,” he said, squinting through the glow and shine of sun-on-snow.  The blizzard’s vanishment had left quite a bright day, only illuminating the cold further.  “I can’t say I can argue.  You’ve lived out here too long for it.  If you run across my body later, use my rifle to put a bullet through whatever got me, will you?”

“Yes.”  It seemed fair enough. 

“Good.  Mighty thanks and farewell to you, John.”  He marched off and away, a little smaller with each step.  He didn’t look back once, which was good.  No sense in looking back.  There’s nothing good back there anyways. 

Oh.  There it was.  I knew I knew it.  Names. 

“Hudson,” I said aloud.  It was much better to speak this way, the right speed, the right way.  None of the chattering haste of Tim White.  “Hudson, Hudson.  John Hudson.”

It was just enough words to be too many. 

“Whiteout” copyright Jamie Proctor 2010. 

Small-five-point-burst-of-light wove slowly and unsteadily about the dips and valleys of the reef, shallowed as they were.  She was a bit older now, but not as large as she should’ve been.  Where her sides should’ve been sleek and compressed with nourishing fat they were thin and clung to her internal structures, her glowshine erratic and often soft and faded rather than clear and bright, their tubes half-filled.  The loss of her sisters (still unfound, still all too harsh and new in her mind) had done more than hamper her mentally, it had disrupted her hunting behaviour, and so far she was adapting poorly.  Try as Small-five might, there was little she could do alone.  Scraps and small fry were not enough to fuel her body’s harsh demands for yet more and more growth, but it was all she could catch.  Perhaps Gloudulite young would’ve helped to feed her, but she had been unable to bring herself to go anywhere near one since the tragedy.  Just the smallest glimpse of the looming shell-spire or the rumble of its distant, destructive grazing would send uncontrollable shivers up and down her body until it passed out of her senses.  Even if she had managed to bring herself near them, doubtless the lack of extra eyes to watch for the Kleeistrojatch cleaners would’ve made the task much more dangerous – a single well-aimed blow from one would still cut her apart.  So she crept and hid in corners and fed upon the weakest and least aware of all that she could find.  The mere sight of a predator made her fearful, and the lack of sight of one more fearful still – she was sure they were just behind her, in her blind spot, where her sisters would’ve seen them. 

Small-five became a timid creature, emerging only in the depths of night, when the Stairrow were abed in their coral lairs and the Verrineeach descended away and out into the deeps.  The food was small and shy, but it was there, and she could feed peacefully if meagrely, safe from the feel of the nonexistent eyes of the predators upon her back.  And feed little; she grew thinner.  It was pure luck that saved, her and that came in the form of losing a meal herself. 

Small-five emerged late from her torporous shelter that night, and found that the reefcolony was already well into the quiet bustle of the night.   Hunting time had been lost, and she would have to make as much haste as she could to make up for it.  She scurried out and stayed low, keeping in the lee and shadows of the terrain, darting forwards and snapping up a stray Ooliku infant in the wake of its school, missing three more quick stabs as they scattered expertly.  A mouthful – an important one, yes, but it could so easily have been three.  Disappointed, she floated back towards the seabed, and there she saw her chance: a lost Verrineeach, separated from its school, spinning gently in the current, devoid of purpose, intent or initiative, fins limp.  Alone, it was far more lost than Small-five could ever imagine being – its very capacity for action, instinct, and intellect depended on the presence of its fellows and the linked net of their interwoven electrical field, many acting as one in perfect, voracious harmony.  Its teeth hung uselessly in the open from a slightly-agape mouth, vicious fangs made as gentle as a soft-bodied plankton. 

Small-five watched it warily, glowshine rising and lowering in intensity as she sought to gain its attention, checking to ensure that its school was truly absent and not merely very late to depart.  All it would take would be for it to become a deadly needle of hunger would be one or two of its comrades, and if a school had shed several of its members nearby they could drift into range and awaken one another.  Try as she might, she couldn’t see any sign of others nearby, and every second that the Verrineeach lingered aimlessly was a second in which it might be noticed and swept up.  It was a nearly fleshless mouthful, but an important one.  She tensed, ready to surge forwards, and then the sand beneath the little predator erupted and it was gone, clamped tight behind the stubby, sucking jaws of a Mtuilk, its flat, scaled body rippling as it shed its camouflaged patterning.  It was slightly longer and thinner than Small-five, with far less of her cruising power but a capacity for blindingly fast movement in a pinch.  As it settled back to the seafloor, it was already fading away, the scales transforming into a pebbled, brown surface that looked all for the world like coarse sand. 

The water shook, and Small-five saw that its strike had not been quite as sudden and unexpected as it may have wished it to be.  A mature Stairrow thundered in, the biggest of those that bordered between small and large, an alpha predator of the beta food chain.  Its jets boiled the water behind as its big, blunt, broad face opened up the jaws that made up most of it, grasping hastily at the flattened form beneath it.  For a moment there its meal was in its grasp, and then it was gone in a single sharp, twisting, convulsive movement on the Mtuilk’s part that was nearly too fast for Small-five to witness, leaving the Stairrow alone, confused, and immersed in a cloud of digestive juices and small scraps and nuggets of semi-digested meat.  It pushed through them contemptuously – each speck was smaller than its teeth – and cruised away, deprived of food. 

Small-five watched the stray particles in the water very carefully, and then she crepy from cover and picked them up, one by one.  A very large piece was the majority of the swallowed Verrineeach, only slightly scoured by acid.  She ate it with care, thoughts turning over and over inside her head. 

Finding a second Mtuilk took some time, but not too long.  They preferred flat surfaces, and though they could mimic more than just sand it certainly did tend to end up as relatively flat ground.  She moved her glowshine over the surface in quick sweeps, watching where the sand altered and attempted to adjust to the new light in unnatural ways.  She made sure of its size (big, but not that much larger than her, or she’d find herself a meal in a completely different manner), then darted straight at it. 

It was just as fast as she’d recalled it – faster, even.  The Mtuilk was up and away before she could even register it as having moved, leaving her in a cloud of regurgitated stomach contents.  Small-five pecked and nibbled and gulped with enthusiasm, ejecting the bits of bone and gristle after cleaning them of all flesh.  She had found a new source of food, and one that required little effort.  She startled four more Mtuilks that night on her rounds, the second-to-last of which was larger than she’d guessed and tried to consume her.  A hasty flare of glowshine interrupted its strike – barely – and she departed, saved by instinctive reaction for the second time that night, this time her own. 

She was more careful the night after that, which nearly didn’t happen; she spent most of the day shivering over a sickened and queasy belly, reacting poorly to the trace acids and bile of the Mtuilk.  The next night was a little easier, and within twelve days she was practiced at overcoming the painful cramps that always came several hours after consuming her second-hand prey.  It made little difference – hers was a shadowed and cautious life now, creeping from cover to cover, making quick snaps and forays at her prey or to provoke her unwilling seafloor food donors, a far cry from the free-swimming, rambunctious antics she’d enjoyed alongside her sisters, veering openly over the reefs in midday and charging headlong into schools of young prey. 

Small-five was not introspective, but she missed those days on a level slightly too deep for her to actively understand it.  Her body wasn’t built for this sort of behaviour – she was lithe and strong, able to swim blindly fast for metres or strongly for hours, made to swim fast and high rather than chug along slowly at the reefcolony’s feet like a plodding miniature Gloudulite.  In some ways she was atrophying even as she began to rise to prosperity again, muscles warping and withering in strange ways even as others bulged unnaturally, body following a path ever so slightly different from that which it was planned to do. 

Her belly no longer grew gaunt, but it was far from firm, and although she was getting more food it wasn’t exactly the best on the reef.  Bottom feeding wasn’t killing her anymore, but merely maintaining herself wouldn’t do when he body screamed for growth.  A full stomach merely reminded her of what an empty one felt like, and she became more aggressive as time floated by, willing to stand on her own more as caution became more innately bound up in her natural thoughts and movements.  Slow and careful movements became bolder, and each time her rounds were made they were quicker than before.  Alone, she was deprived of the eyes of her sisters, but her compensating was leading her towards recovery, if not of her physical strength, then of her natural behaviours, if altered to fit her situation. 

Small-five did not know it, but she was in a great minority by this time.  Of all of her sisters, she was the only one without siblings at her side that remained living, the rest had been killed before they could rejoin.  In total, only eleven of her sisters and a few dozen brothers remained alive at all – she had been lucky to survive to the point of midyouth, and luckier to learn caution without being killed by it.  Midyouth for a female, that was; the males were already teetering towards the slightly-distant horizon of adolescence, enjoying the advantages of a momentary growth spurt granted to them by not having to support the energy demands of glowshine.  Their hides were drabber, their ability to startle predators gone, but they slipped along easily in the currents, bodies perfectly streamlined without the slight ridges and juts of an emergent glowshine-tube or so erupting from their hides.  They were a rare sight, and too fast to bother hunting. 

Time passed, and Small-five grew – a little slighter, a little slower than she would’ve had her sisters remained with her – but she grew.  Her confidence came back bit by bit, and one evening she heard the tremors of a Gloudulite passing, followed them cautiously yet firmly, and left its back with a full stomach and fragments of shells upon her proboscis.  She was nearly the same length as an adult Stairrow now, if much lighter and less bulky than the jet-propelled clumsy things, and she took to exploring the daylight reef again, hour by hour, day by day, sinking back into the sunlight and leaving her nighttime prowls behind, ranging farther afield each day.  In hindsight, what happened was inevitable as soon as she began this. 

It happened as Small-five was crossing a chasm between reefcolonies, coasting over deep water.  A thing that had wracked her nerves the first time she’d managed to muster the courage, a little over six days ago., yet grew easier with each attempt.  Larger things may have lurked there, hovering in the space between the deep blue and the rainbow of life that were the upper reaches, but she was just large enough and fast enough that she felt secure – the least among unfriendly and dangerous equals, at most.  Verrineeach schools bided their time, flicking their fins idly in midwater, sternly blunt-nosed Raskljens stroked their way between the gaps, secure in their massive builds, and once she’d seen a great slithering presence far below that could’ve been an infant Gruskomish, emerging from its deep home to poke its snout out at the world that could one day, centuries from now, behold its ascension into adulthood.  The Raskljens were the only real threat to her – the rest idled, or considered her as beneath their notice as the Raskljens themselves would’ve no less than two months ago.  Stairrow may no longer have threatened her as they once did, but almost no creature ever reached a size that was truly free of predators.  She was cautious as she crossed, as she’d been since the Gloudulite’s destruction, and kept her lights dim and low.  And thus it came to be a great surprise when she saw light in the blue, a short distance away, winking and sparkling.  And not just any light – glowshine.  Memories of Dim-glowing, Pulsing-two, and Three-second jumped into her with the force of a storm, things she’d forgotten for half her short life, and she swam to the source faster than she could believe, glowshine tubes winking erratically, stammering out her name as clumsily as a child – Small-five-point-burst-of-light, Large-five-point-burst-of-light, Eruption-of-all-points-of-light. 

The new lights flared in alarm, dazzling her, and before her surprised, unprepared membranes had finished uncloaking from her eyes she felt strong bodies disturbing the water around her, angry pulses of light and unfriendly chitters.  She hopped midwater in alarm, and felt the swish of a proboscis scrape her side.  She was surrounded, and these were not her sisters, not at all.  Panic brought clearer thought than hope had – they smelled nothing like any of her sisters would’ve, either those she’d lost at birth or at the Gloudulite’s death.  Small-five fled downwards, towards danger and safety.  They were better-fed and fitter but she was desperate, and little pursuit was had, her adversary’s triumphant exchanges of light blurring away against her back after only a brief time. 

This was far from ideal.  Small-five was out of her depth and comfort zone.  There was too little light, and too little colour, and the surface was dizzyingly far overhead, a shimmer too far away for her to feel comfortable.  It was frightening, but exhilarating, and although she knew that she could rise at any time, something in her found the concept of staying in this odd, self-forbidden place interesting.  She coasted still deeper, keeping close to the reefcolony walls, lights absolutely dark.  Her nighttime-honed vision was enough to keep her watching, without letting anything else watch her.  The bones of the bones of the reefcolony’s coral builders passed her by, their particles and pieces and fragments massive and sprawled, the occupants of their hollowed chambers having had a long time to grow before the currents changed and the rest of the reefcolony’s population moved on and upwards, depriving them of their food.  Some of the largest might live still, a tiny fleck of life struggling to survive in a graveyard of its failed fellows, imprisoned in a self-made carapace hundreds of feet across, evading prowling Gloudulites time and time again until eventually even they departed for the newer reaches, and they were alone with the dead and dark and tiny fragments of food.  Small-five, of course, knew none of this, only that she felt nervous around so many broken and crushed shells and the memories they brought.  She turned tail and stroked her way back to the bright lights, letting her own shine through once more.  A faint sound rumbled up from below, deep as the planet’s core, and she wondered if she’d agitated the Gruskomish again.  It didn’t matter.  What did matter was that she’d fled, was bleeding very lightly, and was now hungry.  She set about correcting all of these, and successfully ambushed and speared an unwary member of an Ooliku school before its fellows spotted her, fleeing their pursuit as she ate.  A net gain – subadult Ooliku were fattier than their filmier younger or leaner, hardened adults. 

The rift called to her, in a way.  She passed it frequently, torn between expanding her horizons and the comfort of her home grounds, and took to passing through lower and lower each time, every incident without alarm a reason to go deeper.  The denizens gave her no injury beyond occasional thoughtful looks, although she nearly swam into the center of a Verrineeach school once.  She emitted a bright flash and darted away, probably saved as much by surprise as by the dazzle of her glowshine.  Now and again she would hear the rumbling of the maybe-Gruskomish infant, but that stopped without warning after a score or so of days, its owner likely departed back to its own, abyssal realm.  The loss of that particular thrill struck at something in Small-five, and she began scaling back her exploits, finally terminating them after an incident some months later.  She was returning to the surface, shaking off the clinging chill of the deep canyons, lights flickering back on as the darkness fell away with the need for stealth.  Her hide yet tingled, for no reason she could think of, and if not for an idle turnabout she committed on fancy the extremely large Raskljen following her quietly from a distance of maybe three times her body length would’ve been at her in a moment.  Its secrecy revealed, a short and frantic sprinting contest followed, with Small-five’s superior streamlining and the Raskljen’s dislike for bright light winning out narrowly over its tenacity and brute-force water-pounding.  

That put an end to much of her deep-water adventurousness, but not her exploration.  Small-five was reaching the cusp of adolescence now, and she ranged farther and farther afield.  One day she swam away from the reefcolony she was born in, and she didn’t return.  Instead she moved forward, onward, meandering wildly, resting in a different spot each night, crossing deeper and wider bands of the dark, dangerous blue.  Everything old looked wrong, and everything new looked old.  There was no rest in her, no calmness anymore.  Her mind and body were screaming at her to move, to do something, but she didn’t know what. 

Her answer arrived in the late evening, hundreds of miles from home, patrolling restlessly along the broad borders of the reefcolony she found herself on.  It had been almost one full year since her birth, and the moons had lined up properly.   As Small-five stuttered back and forth along the stretch of coral, something was touched in her, and all the rest of the reefcolony’s life.  It was soft and slow and trancelike – predators and prey alike ceased their restlessness, drifted closer to the edges, away from the closed-in, hemmed-in centers of the habitat and out towards the openness.  It reminded Small-five of the truce at the Gloudulite’s death, but larger.  They waited there in stillness, bobbing in midwater.  The water trembled lightly, a great murmur from below. 

Then with a yawning sigh, the reefcolony opened up. 

Thousands, tens of thousands, millions, billions; the numbers were insufficient to describe the population of shelled little creatures that made up the reefcolony, from great to small.  Most of those little hatches were too small yet to perform the task that awaited them, yet even so, the number of shells that opened wide at that time were staggering.  And from them, wiggling, squirming, swimming their way into the world, came their young: the Fiskupids, billions and billions of them, one from a tiny shell, a few dozen from the average adult, scores and from the big ones, uncountable all together, darting, diving, wide-eyed little things. The reefcolony was bursting with life at most times, but next to this, its closest-kept inhabitants, it was as nothing.  It was if the water itself had come alive. 

The feast was staggering.  All from the scrawniest Mtuilk to the fattest Stairrow ate all they could eat and more and more yet.  It was easily the greatest meal of Small-five’s life, and the most exciting – the Fiskupids were determined, swimming out and away, over to the blue, past the web of predators and prey alike that were determined to feed upon them.  It was inevitably pushed back – out and over into the bottomless blue spilled the reefcolony’s inhabitants, over a height that would stagger them if they could understand it, removed from their fortress, suspended in a blanketing whirlwind of food.

 It went on for hours and hours, and it was some time before the first denizens of Small-five’s world gave up and returned.  First the bottom-feeders, then the slow, and then the small or tired petered out one by one.  Others sank away with their bellies filled: the Verrineeach schools glutted themselves to a member, to the point where one or two individuals might die from overeating, then returned to their rests, trekking home.  The Fiskupids were bound for the deep ocean, to roam the world, and that was no place for those not made for it. 

Some came with them.  Strange large Raskljens followed the swarm closely, mouths shut, minds already calculating the distance till they would next need to feed.  A host of adolescent and adult Ooliku swarmed alongside and intertwined with the Fiskupid, in numbers that in any other circumstance would’ve seemed great.  And Small-five and every one of her sisters and fellow-species followed too, swept up in the storm of life, carried away from the coral mazes of youth and into the wild blue yonder.

The life of Small-five-point-burst-of-light, or Small-five for short, began as her mother hunted down her father. 

It was a great chase over the reefcolony, back and forth, her father using every inch of the greater manoeuvrability his smaller frame gave him, her mother carefully conserving strength and waiting for him to tire, taking each turn with caution lest her greater bulk cause her to overshoot her quarry.  It was a great chase, but in the end her father’s strength began to flag, and he twisted just a little too little, made a tight turn too loosely, and the bony proboscis of Small-five’s mother caught him in his midsection.  He screamed that whistling cry that males used to stun small prey, but it was useless against the thickened and reinforced hide of his captor, and his protest soon faded away as the numbness of her toxins set in, a pleasurable paralysis. 

The docility of her mate now assured, Small-five’s mother dragged him – gently – down and into the shelter of the reef, out of sight of any predators that might happen by.  There she began the business of implanting her eggs, each packet of them guided gently from their nestling-spot on her underbelly to the male’s receptacle by her rear fins.  Exposed to the currents for several days now against her skin, their shells were toughened enough to resist the corrosion of the male’s insides, yet not so thick as to prevent fertilization.  Before long the last egg was in place, and Small-five’s mother withdrew her proboscis and moved off, her duty done, her appetite awakened by the energy she’d expended over the past hour. 

Small-five’s father hovered there in the water for a brief while as the venom cleared his nervous system, as its nutrients were absorbed into his bloodstream.  His mate might not be around to care for their young, but she would ensure that he was fit enough to protect them as they matured.  There were strange catalysts and triggers hidden inside that sedating fluid, ones that would alter him significantly over the course of the young’s maturation.  Not that he knew it, of course.  He was a male, and nonsapient.  All Small-five’s father knew was that he felt very good and wanted to go lie low somewhere for a while so he could rest.  So he did. 

For the next nine days Small-five’s father lay low and rested, hidden in a small coral chamber in the sunnier part of the reef, close to the surface, dreaming.  What finally brought him forth was sharp, itching hunger – and for something bigger than the small fry that he’d devoured for the bulk of his life.  He squirmed his way out of the cave and into the wide and whirlingly chaotic world of the reef again, his sides ablaze with new colours triggered by strange hormones and odd genes, movements quickened with fresh hair-trigger muscles.  He ignored a school of his old favourite food, soft-finned, slow-swimming, immature Ooliku, and chased a lone Stairrow around the corals, its wide-eyed, blunt body suddenly too slow to escape his new speed.  He ate it quickly – he did everything so quickly now – and moved on, hunting, nosing. 

Small-five’s father ate and ate and ate for days with barely a rest as the eggs matured inside him, every bite and sup of nutrition going to his young and to fuel his own gradual transformation, day by day, leaving him hungry and fierce.  His bulk grew along with his quickness, transforming him from a predator of the meek reef-dwellers to a powerful hunter of the swift in the open seas, where he swam boldly now, far from his old home grounds.  Tusks grew from a mass of little prickly teeth, giving him long spears to grip and pierce with, to mash his prey into those now-serrated banks of needles inside his mouth before his jaw movements shredded its skin and flesh apart.  He ate and ate and ate, in the heart of great swarms of darting Fiskupids as they mated, under the chillier cold of the poles where things that could consume him in two bites lurked, and once even in the panicked wake of a Gruskomish Godfish.  He was insatiable and bold. 

Come two-hundred-and-fourteen days after Small-five’s father had been hunted down by her mother, his hunger calmed.  He was nearly thrice the size he’d been before, all bright colours and sharp teeth, and he was ready to give birth.  He eschewed his canny and elusive prey and set his fins for the softness and colours of the reef he’d been born in, a swim he made with slow and sure strokes, saving his strength for the birth.  His arrival sent schools of smaller life careening away in alarm, sending tremors of worry and fear up from the fringes down into the bustling heart of the slow-growing shell-dwellers whose corpses built the reef upon their backs.  He ignored them, careless of the chaos his path brought as he reached the sunniest shallows, so slight in depth that the flatness of his great red back, broad and bent with muscle, nearly broke the surface. 

Small-five’s father gave birth to her then, along with some eight-hundred-and-forty-four brothers and seventy-six sisters.  He showed little emotion other than concentration and some discomfort throughout the twenty minutes this took, and when it was finished he took his leave immediately, setting out back to the deep waters, where he could feed again and regain his strength.  But this was not his fault.  Behind him he left many confused and disoriented young lifeforms, operating on instinct and wonder.  Before the day was done there were five-hundred-and-twelve brothers and forty-three sisters of Small-five hidden around the reef in small places, operating on instinct and fear.  The reef was a small, soft place only for their father.  For them it was a dangerous and very large world. 

Small-five’s brothers dispersed far and wide, and she never saw any of them again.  They hid in dark corners and nooks and fed upon the tiny particles of matter and meat in the water, timid and fleeting and alone.  Small-five’s sisters were closer – they banded together in small companies of three-to-five, keeping as many eyes as possible on all sides and angles, each ready to flash out a warning to the others from the bioluminescent jelly-filled tubes that snaked around their bodies, just under the surface of the skin.  At this age all that the sisters could do was shine brightly or remain dim and hidden.  The former they used to startle predators and prey alike, the latter they used to hide or wait in ambush. 

As they fed – on larger prey that their brothers did, on the slow and the dying and dead – they grew, and as they grew they learned small semblances of control over their glowshine.  Names came soon afterwards, half-thought-of patterns of habit that came to mind whenever their sisters lit up as they each flexed and turned and tumbled into their own particular patterns and habits.  Before this Small-five-point-burst-of-light had been in company with three of her sisters, but now she was in company with Three-second-glimmer, Dim-glowing-four-point-pulse, and Pulsing-two-point-fin-shine. 

By this time they had begun to grow past the living detritus of the reef as their prey, and they started to feed upon the small and the slow.  Their small proboscises were now strong and hard enough to poke small holes in the shells of the young of the great Gloudulites.  While they sat, firmly attached to the invincible carapaces of their parents, the company would descend upon them and jointly crack them, eating their flesh from the inside out as they squirmed.  Eventually the cleaners of the Gloudulites would arrive to quell their feasting – the multi-legged, cadaverous Kleeistrojatch – and then it would be time to flee, shining brightly to dazzle their assailants and halt their sickle-scything limbs as they swam out of reach.  If they were quick and daring enough they might dart past those claws in that one moment of shocked surprise and snap their proboscises into their soft and vulnerable eyes, snagging a fresh if lean meal as they escaped. 

The one downside of preying upon the Gloudulite young was their small size and the effort involved.  If the Kleeistrojatch were particularly hasty in their defence of their host’s offspring, Small-five’s company might depart with naught to show for their shell-drilling efforts but a few nibbles of flesh, or maybe nothing at all.  Still, they were an excellent fallback food, and easy to find – an elder Gloudulite, shell-spire grown so massive as to erupt out of the water, ponderously heaving its way across the reefcolony floor with a cacophonous scrabbling of its many gripping legs against frail and crumbling shell-matter, was scarcely difficult to locate, although they ranged far apart and wandered constantly, if slowly.  Small-five and her three sisters grew to memorize the positions of the giants, and note the directions of their wanderings. 

They were growing still larger and stronger by then, yet were still young.  They were now larger than the Kleeistrojatch, and would often linger to sup over a meal until the cleaners arrived in overwhelming numbers, gleefully flaring at them and sending them scuttling back with pained black eyes.  Secure in their youth and burgeoning strength and cushioned by time from that traumatizing first day of life, they’d forgotten fear.  Oh, they were careful of predators, taking to the nooks and crannies when a Stairrow cruised by, a flat, stupid mouth attached to a sharp and predatory brain, or worse still, the sleek and delicate forms of a school of Verrineeach, each individual in the hundred-strong school linked firmly in thought and motion to each other, tiny brains sparking with electrical impulses against each other to create something larger and more dangerous.  But they avoided them by route, by instinct, as a precaution rather than the very real hazard that they were. 

This changed the day Small-five and her three sisters meandered their way out to near the edge of the reefcolony and found themselves hungry. 

This was neither scarcely rare nor scarcely alarming.  There was a Gloudulite near, questing in its eternal trek of bottom-feeding, a truly exhaustive kind that ate the actual seafloor out from under it.  With the ease and practice of familiarity, the four descended upon the upper reaches of its swirling shell and flew upon its young, wriggling in excitement as shells cracked apart and soft meat was exposed to the air and snapped up into underslung maws.  In this brief, practiced blitzkrieg they could claim perhaps two each if fortune and speed favoured them, rippling lights on their sides suggesting thinly-defended targets or incautious young that yet peeped from their lairs.  This was a good one; the cleaners were slow, buffeted back from their advances in the rippling currents that breathed their way up from the deep edges of the reefbed.  New pulses rippled in the water, even throwing some of them free from their host’s back, claws waving wildly and tails flapping as they attempted to return to home.  Small-five and her sisters thought little of it, then sparkled in alarm as they too began to bob uncontrollably in the water.  The Gloudulite was turning under them, faster than they’d ever known one of the plodding behemoths to move, spinning towards the blue wall beyond the reef.  As their eyes – their large, sensitive, oh-so-vital eyes – turned to it, the maw appeared, so quickly that it could not be seen approaching.  One moment it was there, the next it wasn’t.

The next next moment it slammed into the Gloudulite’s side, a blade of teeth backed by tonnes of muscle and flesh.  The giant’s shell fractured and shattered, splinters of fang-sharp calcium-based protective armour slicing through the water and impaling young and cleaners alike.  A large sliver sped by Small-five’s right fin, and it neatly clipped off its tip.  She was filled with such momentary shock at the injury that it took the flow of blood in the water for her to notice that the same shard had struck her sister directly – her head hung on a tiny strand of meat, body limp and twitching as its lights shut down. 

The terror she felt probably saved Small-five’s life.  She fled – somewhere, anywhere else – and was aided in her panic by a chance of current, a byproduct of the struggle occurring beneath her.  She had never met a Jarekindj before, and it would be years before she saw another or learned anything of them or their habits, but she would never forget that moment, where there was nothing to be see in the whole universe but a gaping mouth, ring-shaped, studded with silvery tusks. 

Small-five swam a long way in her panicked flight, unguided by anything but instinct, which served her well, directing her away from the reef-verge and the cataclysmic struggle that consumed it, away from the deep places and towards the softer shallows, where the world was smaller and warmer and there was less food but it was far safer, oh so much safer.  When she stopped, trembling with exhaustion, there was nothing left to do but think, and her thoughts did not please her.  She did not know where her sisters had gone.  She was alone, for the first true time in her life, and it terrified her.  No eyes to watch for hers, no strengths to aid hers, no reassurance, no soundless exclamations of light and thought to be passed back and forth.  The loss of the group was a blow to her chances of survival, but far greater injury was dealt to her psyche.  The sun rose and fell four times before she overcame her newfound timidity and poked her head out of the cranny where she’d shoved herself, a chink between two great masses of reefcolony that was barely wide enough for her to fit through. 

It took her some time to extract herself, slowly and fearfully, tensing at every sound, not a single light showing for fear of what might see her.  Only quiet and darkness met her worry, and she swam silently and slowly until the sun rose, belly empty and screaming for food.  That problem, at least, was solved rapidly – a school of Stairrow larva swarmed into her face as she nosed about the reef floor, startled and alarmed.  Small-five lashed out, and her instincts once again saved her, bringing her three or four larva as a meal in several passes before she had the time to think about exactly what was happening.  The larva had been hiding, yes, but relatively out in the open for the day – they were night dwellers, who took refuge in tiny crevices during the daytime for fear of predators like herself.  The reef was quiet even for these shallow strands, and she felt an inkling of puzzlement. 

A full belly gave her mind strength, and with effort she was able to force back both despair and apathy to rest her thoughts on a cause: she must find her sisters again.  For all she knew the other two had been sent spinning any-which-way just as she had.  The best thing to do would be to return to the last place they’d been and search, as she was sure they would.  Fear rose, crawling along her light-tubes like an infestation of worms, but she overruled it.  She was full, she was as rested as she could expect, and she had a goal.  There was no room left for fear at the moment – it may have saved her life, but now it was inconvenient and must be ignored.  With difficulty. 

The swim took some time – more than it had to arrive.  Small-five had no wings of panic, no strange currents to aid her, and the daylight had flown out of the sky by the time she drew near.  She had mustered the courage to draw a little glowshine from herself, enough to light her way without making herself obvious, and felt it drain away with her courage as she approached that blue-black void ahead, the murky wall that had given her the mouth.  Yet it was not without detail or feature, not anymore.  Shapes of all sizes flittered and eeled across it, surged and cruised.  The reef’s verge was aswarm with predators from the smallest to the largest, the missing bounty of the reef, and they were ignoring each other, streaming over and about in their haste to swarm over the gigantic, broken husk of the Gloudulite’s shell.  Even half-shattered it seemed indestructible, – its smallest fragments thicker than her entire body and then some – even as it bared its secret insides to the world.  The Gloudulite itself was missing but for small shreds, the last bits of a feast that must have feted the entire reef’s carnivores for all the days of Small-five’s retreat into herself.  The Jarekindj had fed upon it thoroughly by its standards, leaving only what it must’ve dismissed as tiny scraps.  All things are relative. 

Small-five hovered there on the edge, watching as the last bits were cleaned away.  She saw the truce of bounty beginning to fray around the edges, the first snaps, first aggressive movements, first threat displays, and she knew that she must leave before the second, violent feast began.  But she lingered for just a moment longer, searching for lights that she could not see.