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I have abandoned trying to break apart my prison. The walls will not yield, and if they did, my effort would only strand me in the shadows to parch until such time as the Shark discovered me and found some cruel new use for my body. Harvest my teeth. Cut off my fins. Expose my carcass to the gulls just like the whales humans ravage then leave to rot on the beach.

And yet, the other one returned tonight. Benigno.

With food.

I strive to discern what rarity in this human made you choose him for my protector, Mother. His attention allows me to observe him more closely. He stands as tall as the Shark, but leaner, with a formidable strength in his webless hands that defended him from my violent rage before they began toiling over the instruments beside my cell. Still—he is not without frailty.

The sounds his lungs produced. I could find no amusement in his condition. What blight lives inside Benigno’s chest that makes him drown above water?

As he labored for breath, he called me perfect—an ignorant assumption, for there is nothing perfect in the choices I made under the moon’s light. But perhaps the word’s meaning differs for a creature who dwells in shame of his body’s strange deficiencies.

I should not have helped him. Our elders would have surely condemned it.

But I felt you closer to me when I did.