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I had the human in my grip. The last thing you touched. Had he not struck my hand, he would have been slain by it.

Is this what captivity has wrought in my heart? Have I bowed at last to the savagery our harmony has condemned in humans since their relentless voyages across the Salted Deep began? Never have I so misplaced myself to violence that I had loosed my voice to the air, hissing into the face of a creature no larger than a bluefin!

Merciful Neptune. What would you think of me, Mother?

“They have souls,” you had told me once the smoke had cleared from the estuary. “You saw how they grieve.”

The other man, vested like an eel with eyes like a trench-dweller—whose thunderous blast took you away; I am loath to believe he has ever grieved.

But the one I harmed today does not have such eyes. When you died, he looked at me, and in his gaze was my own horror reflected.

Perhaps that is why I leapt for his throat.