DoA September Challenge: Too Young

Too Young

The currents were changing again. Cooler waters were rushing into the shallows and sunken bay city. Some of the older Aqrions were talking about traveling south into warmer waters. Samoa assumed her parents had headed that way, as well, with the other pods of Singers and Sea Skimmers.

Not that her mother had cared to inform her and her siblings.

She circled back around from where she had been observing a school of fish dart to and fro in the swaying grassy plain littered with old ruins. The shallows had grown quiet as Aqrions left, but on the bright side bigger schools of fish had started to appear. Perhaps even squid would come from deeper waters. Beyond the edge of the plain where the seafloor dropped considerably was the distant song of migrating pods, growing fainter by the hour.

When she returned to where her siblings were sheltering underneath a stone bridge that had long been overgrown by coral and algae, Tonga was intimidating a lobster that was trying to cram itself further into a crevice and Fiji was hovering between two orange sea fans.

“Tonga, that thing’s going to crack you before you crack it,” she said to her sister.

Tonga ignored her and continued kicking up sand with her tail in her effort to pull the lobster back out.

Samoa looked up at her brother. “You want to try hunting with us tonight?”

Fiji shook his head and shrunk away into the bright corals.

She sighed. Of course he didn’t want to come. He had always been the more reserved one, but after what Seoul had said to them, he had retreated from the world.

“Come on. We’re going. Now,” she said and yanked on Tonga’s dorsal fin.  

Tonga had a lot of words for her as they swam out onto the grassy plain, but Samoa let them roll off her. A single lobster wouldn’t feed all three of them. They needed a bunch of fish or a sizable ray or the mother of all crabs to get them by for another day or two. It was difficult enough to make sure she got something to eat, never mind make sure Tonga and Fiji ate enough, too.

The school of fish saw them coming from still half a field away. Their silver scales glinted orange in the setting sun and their big black eyes shined. There were schools of much smaller fish that may have been easier to catch and much closer to their current hideout, but these ones were the size of her flippers. If they even caught one they would be okay. If both she and Tonga caught one, they’d be living like royalty.

“I take left, you take-”

“Right. Yeah, yeah, I got it, same as always,” Tonga muttered.

Samoa glared at her as she peeled away to surround the shimmering school of fish. The fish moved slowly in an ever rotating circle, a living whirlpool in slow motion. She caught glimpses of Tonga’s cyan tail here and there as they circled the school, around and around.

They both charged into it at the same time.

The fish parted in a silver curtain right down the middle. 

Tonga’s melon smacked directly into Samoa’s and sent both of them reeling. Samoa blinked and spit out a small tooth. Tonga cursed, a phrase she had definitely picked up from an older Aqrion no doubt, and frantically chased the school around. Samoa watched her sister futilely dash through the school time and time again, missing each fish by a wide berth, until she had to surface and stayed there for a while chugging at the air.

“I’m so tired of these friggin’ fish! I’m going back to catch that lobster,” Tonga said and stormed off towards their hideout.

Samoa surfaced and only sank below the waves when the last of the orange light winked out of the horizon. She drifted to the sandy bed below, the silver fish teasing her the whole time by coming within an inch of her face.

The lush sea grass tickled her underside as she swam from sandy patch to sandy patch at a subdued pace. A small ray flew out from under her, gone too fast for her to even make an attempt to catch it. She eventually stopped where the plain dipped away to the inky depths of the open ocean. The sea grass welcomed her weary and small body with soft and gentle caresses.

Once upon a time, food wasn’t something they had to worry about. Memories of Monte speeding across grassy plains like this one played before her eyes. He could catch anything that moved and bring it back to them proudly. She remembered hiding under his shadow when bigger Aqrions came too close. Remembered him showing her how to breach. How to catch a current. How to play in the ribbons of sunlight.

Until Seoul grew bored of them and left. And Monte returned to his home pod, brokenhearted.

And Samoa and Tonga and Fiji were left to fend for themselves with no pod. No home. No skills. Too young to be on their own.

Samoa wanted to bury herself in the sea grass. To just disappear. The cold, miserably heavy pain weighed in her chest. She had to be the adult. She was the responsible one. At one time that meant she just had to keep track of Fiji and keep Tonga from getting her head stuck in a clam, but now that meant making sure they didn’t starve or get eaten by something bigger.

She cast her eyes to the gaping maw of the unknown. An ocean untouched by her, full of monsters and dangers. If she wasn’t so worried about what would happen to her siblings if she was gone, she would have swam straight out there and kept going. It would either be a wonderful adventure or be the end of her. She didn’t have the energy to care which.

The night settled in and threw the shallows into hues of blue and purple. Small pinpricks of light sparkled in the darkness that plunged down at the edge of the plain, like someone had upended the starry night sky into the ocean.

Samoa squinted.

The dancing lights were larger than plankton. Much larger.

She rose from where she had been wallowing in the sea grass. The lights were smooth creatures doing loop de loops in the open water. They looked vaguely familiar. Long conical heads with trailing tentacles.

Her eyes widened.

Squid!

Monte had brought one back once when she was half her current size. The meat had been some of the best she had ever tasted.

Before she knew it, she had ventured out beyond the limit of the plain. Her heart pounded unevenly. Empty space yawned below her. She had never been beyond the shallows where she could always see the ground. It didn’t help that night had fallen.

A slender white mass of muscle shot right in front of her face.

She flipped backwards out of the way with a cut off scream. The noise drew the bigger creature’s attention to her, and despite her black hide nearly blending into the dark water, bright eyes picked her out easily. Sharp teeth flashed, snapping the rest of a squid out of existence as it turned its attention on her. 

She froze.

A row of yellow bulbs blinked on one by one, illuminating the body of the creature.

“You’re a long way from your pod.”

Her jaw popped open.

“You’re also rather small to be this far out of the shallows.”

A squeak came out.

“And apparently you don’t speak, either.”

The rectangular head burst her personal bubble. She couldn’t even bring herself to back up. Multi-sectioned jaws hiding needle teeth within twitched while the blue eyes examined her intently.

“You’re far too frail. Where are your parents? Where is your pod?”

Samoa gritted her teeth and said softly, “We don’t have one.”

The imposing creature cocked his head to the side. “Singers always have a pod.”

“It’s just me and my siblings,” she whispered. She probably shouldn’t have been telling a stranger all of this, especially not a stranger with a mouth big enough to swallow her whole.

He continued to stare her down, a white wraith twisting and writhing in the abyss, his yellow bulbs the only indication where parts of his body were. A squid glided between them. Samoa glanced at it longingly, but quickly returned to lock eyes with the deep sea creature. She had never seen the likes of his kind before. He looked more like an eel than a Singer or Skimmer did.

“What are you?” she finally asked.

The fins framing his face fanned out. “I’m an Abyssal.”

“Oh.”

He pulled his head back out of her personal space and laid his fins back. “A word of advice: it is better for you to ask for a name before a species.”

“I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. She shrunk away from him. “What’s your name?”

“Arozzi. And you are?”

“Samoa.”

“What are you doing out here all on your own, Samoa?”

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, eyes drifting toward the squids swimming around a little farther off. “Looking for food.”

Arozzi followed her gaze to the squid. “Even the most skilled Singers have a difficult time catching squid.”

“But I saw you catch some?”

“And as I said, I’m not a Singer, I’m an Abyssal,” he said. “My kind are more suited to hunting and catching slippery morsels. Every bit counts in the deep.”

“We’re struggling to even catch lobsters,” Samoa said. She started gesturing with her flippers. “And the fish are too fast and the rays are too hidden and we’ve never even seen squid in the shallows. We’ve been surviving on minnows and tiny crabs.”

He hummed. “That would explain your small size.”

Samoa stared at him for a while longer in silence. He was a mass of muscle, sleek and well fed. He had translucent flippers and was longer than any Aqrion she had seen. He was a stark contrast between her and her siblings and an Aqrion that had been properly raised to hunt and provide for himself.

“I really should be heading back to my sister and brother,” she said at last.

Turning her back on such a large creature made her spine tingle, but she did so and started to swim back to the shallows at a creeping pace, her flippers and tail trembling.

“If you want to provide for your family and survive the winter monsoons, you need to learn how to hunt.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” she muttered. Tell her something she didn’t know.

“It’s not wise to turn down an offer on a hunting lesson when you’re in desperate need of one.”

She paused. Turned around. It was dark and she was tired. Tonga and Fiji would start wondering where she was, too. 

“Can’t you just catch me a squid for tonight?”

Arozzi slowly maneuvered in the water and tilted his head. “Give a creature a fish, feed it for a day. Teach a creature to fish, feed it for a lifetime.”

Well. Samoa couldn’t argue with that logic.

She followed Arozzi to where the squids were clustered near the surface over open waters. It was so tempting to dive into the thick of them. They were right there, ripe for the taking.

Arozzi held a fin up to stop her from charging in with her mouth open.

“Where do the squid usually live?”

She halted. “What?”

“Where do the squid usually live?”

“Uh…” She glanced at the tantalizing squid, at Arozzi, and back at the squid. “On the seafloor?”

“So where do you think they usually see their predators coming from?”

“Above?”

“So where do you think you should come at them from?”

Samoa’s eyes lit up. She looked up at Arozzi and then pointed downward with her rostrum. He nodded and plunged into the darkness. She hesitantly followed him. What little light there was vanished completely. She moved closer to Arozzi’s side.

“Pick one out. Keep your eyes on it. And hit it as fast as you can.”

She rolled onto her back like Arozzi and stared up at the moonlight on the surface of the water. The shapes of squids bolted through the streams of silver light. A large fin shoved her forward.

“Pick one. Lock eyes. Charge,” she said over and over.

She flicked her tail and took off.

*    *    *    *

Tonga jumped up from the sand when she spotted her.

“Samoa! What the heck? I thought you got eaten or something.”

Fiji peeked out from around the fan coral. “Samoa?”

Tonga squinted. She boldly swam out from under their bridge to meet her sister. Her jaw dropped.

“Is that...is that?”

Samoa held her head up proudly, brandishing a squid with tentacles longer than her.

Tonga and Fiji both set upon her, Tonga clamoring for how she managed it and Fiji waiting expectantly for his turn. Samoa couldn’t stop grinning despite the squid in her mouth. Not only could she feed her sister and brother tonight, but she could feed them forever now.

She wondered what else the big white Abyssal could teach her.