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.