The Huntress
She is grateful for this warm
meal; her clan had broken apart days ago to hunt, and pickings had been scarce.
She moves on before the water cleans itself of the blood. To her, this savagery
is not anything particularly cruel or violent; it is a way of life. All she
knows is that she is alive, and to stay alive she must keep swimming, keep
eating, and, one day, mate. She swims. She cannot stop, and she will never stop
until her life is over.
The cool waters roll over her
blue back and under her white belly. She is thankful, in her simple animalistic
way, for this natural camouflage. She senses the waters above her ripple with a
disturbance, like a sea bird lighting on the surface to rest, and, perhaps, to
eat. She knows her time to act is short, as the birds are quick and can fly far
away from the water she is confined to. She flicks her tailfin through the
water, propelling herself up toward the surface. She can see the sunlight
brighter now, silhouetting the bird. She opens her jaws again for the kill. She
rises slightly from the surface of the water as she snaps her jaws shut,
entirely encapsulating the bird. The sea breeze is pleasant against her snout.
She falls back into the water, her heavy, muscled body causing a splash.
Again in her watery home, she
swims. Waves near her shift the water. Smaller fish dart this way and that in a
chaotic dance. She doesn’t waste energy trying to eat them and instead swims
through their school; they part for her as if she was a queen. Having razor sharp teeth has its advantages,
she thinks to herself. She likes being a shark, she decides.
She hears human sound. The sound of a boat
motor, churning up the waves she’s been feeling. The unintelligible sound of
their chatter. She turns to swim as far away as her terrified tail could take
her. Her turn has her swimming right into their thick net. She thrashes her
body, trying to gnaw through the rope, but it yields no results. She is hoisted
through the water, up and up and up, until she can feel air under her belly instead
of water. She feels exposed. Although she knows the safety of water is gone,
she still tries to swim. Her gills begin to ache for water. She is dumped
carelessly onto the hard floor of a boat. She hears the humans louder now. They
are all around her. She makes a moot attempt to bite at their legs. She thrashes,
trying to escape still.
She finds herself struggling to
move any longer, as she has been out of the water far too long. One of the
humans step closer, his foot inches from her snout. All she could smell was
blood; the human reeked of the blood of tens, maybe hundreds, of others like
her. He knelt down and gripped her big dorsal fin tight. He pressed something
cold to it, something sharp. Suddenly, her back erupts into hot pain. She feels
her blood trickle onto the floor of the boat. She feels sick. She hears him
throw her fin onto a pile of others, and with that meaty slap, the job is done.
They hoist her back in the water, tossing her carelessly into the blue before
zooming away.
Underwater, the suffocation
ends, but another problem arises. Despite how hard she tries, she cannot swim.
She is sinking, the pressure around her increasing as time passes. When the
scavengers come to pick her to the bone, she changes her mind. She doesn’t like
being a shark.
