The Ecdysis of Being

Fiction - by Alyssa Gonzalez

I shed for this.

I evolved for this.

I made my body for this.

The sea floor was empty but for the gray mud beneath my feet and the thick cables snaking out to the boreholes. I waved at the station behind me, and they shut off the floodlights with a loud thud. Now, the only light was the indicators every two meters on each cable, gleaming through the dark. Most of the others could not see them with or without the floodlights drowning them out, but I could. I pulsed my swimmerets to lift off from the bottom, leaving a cloud of silt behind me for no one to see. My movements were the only ones in this place; surface currents were long dead by this depth and other life was rare. It was not long before I found the indicator that had gone out, and the reason. I pulled out my radio.

“Otodath damage.” Other life was rare, and often inconvenient. “This section has to be replaced.”

“Folching otodaths,” Controller Trionat cursed. Trionat’s vulgarity was the stuff of geotherm legend. “I would santorize the lot of them if I could.”

I groaned.

“Just santorize them right in their spiny heads.”

I knew the fastest way out of this conversation and it was not challenging Trionat on his attitude toward the local wildlife. With a sigh, I got into character. “Now now, save some for Homard. He’ll be salty if you don’t.”

Trionat’s throaty chuckle almost blew out the radio and kept him from hearing my shudder of discomfort. “You got it, Pagurat. Do you have what you need?”

Back to work. “It’s otodath mating season, so I figured it was something like this. I brought the parts.”

“Good. Take care of it. I’ll see you when you’re done.”

“See you then.”

I climbed onto the damaged length of cable and began removing bolts and twisting safeties. I had an abundance of limbs and practice using them all, so it was a harmony of coordinated precision, each new part exiting my storage pod just as other limbs needed it. One pair emptied the rear seal of its bolts, another pair collected them, a third kept my storage pod organized. By the time I was unfastening the replacement cable segment from my carapace, all that was left was sealing it in place and running connection tests. I had done this dozens of times before and the sequence was automatic, motions memorized long ago. I was already back at the station with the damaged segment and my tools before I realized I had forgotten to call in my approach and the airlock was not ready for me. Homard, Trionat, and Mysina made sure I knew it once they let me inside.

“You have to let us know when you’re coming, Pagurat,” Mysina said, shrill and frazzled, as she pushed through the airlock reset sequence. What if we had been repairing it?”

“You maintain the airlocks at 1600 hours tomorrow, weekly,” I said dully, shaking the excess water into the floor drains.

“But what if?”

“Then I’d have had to wait outside longer.”

“And make us drop whatever we were doing to get you inside,” Trionat growled, huffing through his gill chambers. “You can remember to bring a two-meter replacement cable segment with you, but not to call in your return for the airlock? We both know that’s folching ridiculous.”

“He’s got a point,” Homard said, bringing his small body in close to retrieve my gear for storage. “Everything runs more smoothly if we know when you’re arriving.”

“You’re right,” I said, restraining the urge to sigh, put my head in my hands, and wait for them to be done. “You’re right and I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t un-attack my thoracic heart when you give me those urgent calls, Pagurat,” Mysina snarled as she finished the airlock sequence.

“I already said I was sorry.” I turned away from the bright entrance to face the airlock. “Can we dim the lights?”

“They’d already have been dim if you’d called in your approach,” Mysina continued as she reached for the lights and lowered their intensity. In a moment, they were low enough to stop singeing my retinas. “You’d think you could bring covers with you, if you remember everything else.”

I almost said, the regulation eye covers haven’t been enough since my second training molt, but instead, I just sighed. Trionat moved on to the mess hall, muttering something about Chef Scambaro’s ratfish pot pie and how it’d better not be so “folching gooey” this time. Homard finished stowing the contents of my storage pod while I filled out the excursion log. As I entered the last lines, he approached me.

“I don’t care what the others say,” he said, “I’m glad to have you on the team, Pagurat.”

“Thanks, Homard.”

“If it weren’t for you, it’d probably be me or Trionat out there, and we’d be so much worse off.”

“Thanks.”

“It really is a huge help to have you here taking that on for us.”

“It’s what I’m here for.” I finished and started heading to my quarters.

“Aren’t you going to the mess hall?”

“Not tonight. I’m not hungry, and if I see another ratfish pot pie this week I might scream.”

“Fair enough. See you tomorrow.”

“See you.”

As I walked to my quarters, I kept an arm between my head and the ceiling lights.  Inside, I had already turned off every light, heater, and humming electronic anything that Mysina would let me. I eased into my corner sleep pond, my whole body relaxing as the cold water took the edge off the terrestrial warmth of the station. It was not the outside, but it would do. I buried my head under my own curling segments, enveloped in the frigid, silent dark my body demanded. I thought of everywhere but where I was until sleep took me. 

My name is Pagurat, I am 25 molts old, and I made my body for this.

It took three molts to make my body for this job. I studied the mechanics of our electrical systems for three molts, and when I was not in the library or the classroom, I was in the barochambers, the hibersaunas, the altitude pavilions, and everywhere else that could prepare me. My body tracked the stresses and rose to meet them. With the first molt, I was already growing and hardening, and my shell even started turning red to help keep the otodaths from seeing me. With the second, my eyes enlarged to detect the sunken indicators and my pleon grew to make me a better swimmer. With the third, the world outside the acclimation chambers started to feel hot, dry, achingly heavy, and blindingly bright. The geotherm staff brought me to Mariana Station later that day, lest any further exposure to the surface reduce my suitability for the abyss. 

I was small and spindly before. Most of us were, before we started molting. I had lived other lives before this one. Small and spindly, agile and strong, and now…

Sleep was clearly over, even if work had not yet started. I activated my view screen. There were no windows in Mariana Station, as the risk of a leak drowning the fragile electronics and shutting off the entire power plant was too great, so the view screen was the only way to see outside. The silent camera feed was aimed at the signal light from the third borehole, but it sometimes caught an otodath or sea jelly pulsing by. This time, the only movement was the flecks of marine snow, the sinking remains of creatures that once dwelt in the light. There was no light here that the station and its ancillary buildings didn’t provide; even the bioluminescent swimming worms stayed away. There was no morning, night, or anything else but what the station emulated for its workers. I enjoyed the silence for about ten minutes before the marquee above the screen started scrolling a reminder of the day’s agenda: “INSPECTION.”

Mysina and Homard met me at the airlock with packets of algae rations, a storage pod full of everything I would need for the day, and new instructions.

“Mysina finished the new seismometers, so you’ll have to remove the old ones on boreholes two, five, and nine to switch these in,” Homard explained while he helped me get ready. “The one for borehole nine is more sensitive, so don’t mix it up with the other two. That’s on top of inspecting all the lines and the exterior collision sensors. There are signs of a new methane seep near borehole two, so watch for that and catalogue what you find.” Homard finished putting my storage pod on me and helping me strap it in place. “When you’re done, check grid 21-6 with the radiometer to see if it’s a decent place for a tenth borehole. I…think that’s the whole list.”

“Nothing too ambitious, then,” I said in a deadpan I wasn’t sure I believed.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Mysina said as she readied the airlock. “You’re good at what you do out there. Just try to be back before airlock maintenance.”

“Thanks.” I entered the airlock and, a short while later, experienced the mercy of the cold, dark, aquatic, pressurized abyss.

After yesterday’s repair work, the inspection was smooth. Mariana Station was one of several providing power to the metropolis on the island above it, so it was built solid and redundant. My assigned inspections were frequent enough that, even in otodath mating season, damage did not have time to accumulate. The steady rhythm of scraping burrowcles off before they could dig into the cables, patching otodath gouges that weren’t serious enough to knock out a section on their own, and plugging my integrity analyzer into a new port every few meters left me enough room to think.

I made my body for this, but I wanted so much more. I had so much more. I used to live in a warm, sunny sea, with a cottage on the Warao Reef and a job ahead of me as a coral gardener, with a body that thrived on light and waves and heat. I was long and maneuverable, then, not this bulky, solid armor, the better to explore the reef and collect polyps for cultivation. I could spend a few hidden hours in the deep coral crevices, where the burrowcles had already exposed the history of the reef and no obligations could intrude. I practiced with every kind of coral I could find, learning fragmentation techniques and propagation heights, everything it took to grow them into beautiful new homes and art items for the growing reef town.

The first borehole. Nothing special, all sensors nominal, no seismometer replacement. It would be a quick swim to the second one before inspecting its cable.

The sun in Warao was amazing. The reefs kept the water so clear that visibility did not fade until the continental shelf, kilometers from shore. There were days when I looked out at its beauty, at beauty that I had a hand in creating, and wept.

Homard was right about the methane seep near borehole two. Better swim around it and note the location. Two was one of the boreholes getting a new seismometer. Switches to off, unlatch, unscrew, swap, settle, connect, test. All signs normal. Cable two has more burrowcles than the rest.

People wanted to live near the reef. They still do. Life is plentiful there, the place was alive with building material, and the regular solar rhythm ideal for a vibrant nightlife as well as energetic days. After a planktonic youth, I could think of nowhere better to settle. I made my body for the reef, for the tropics. I made my body for the sun.

Cables two and three were easy to patch. One section was borderline and I flagged it for replacement. I would have to make a second trip for that; only so much I could carry. A shadow moved overhead, something only I could see. Otodath? I would find out soon enough. I kept one of my limbs on my buzz-gun in case it came closer. Regulation said to look for it and drive it off before doing anything else, but most of them avoided us and just liked to rub themselves on the cables and dig nests under them. Antagonizing them just for existing near the power plant never sat well with me. The seismometer on borehole four showed a 0.01% calibration error. Testing again, nominal. Moving on. Cable four, pristine. Cable five, burrowcle damage but nothing serious. Was the more sensitive seismometer replacement for cable five or nine? Five or nine? I held the two in front of me at the top of the borehole, trying to remember. Booting up the tablet containing my agenda would take longer than remembering.

The darkness got closer, and I turned to face it. The otodath flared its gills and red threat patches, a miscellany of spines raised to frighten me, but one blast from the buzz-gun sent it fleeing. It was not until a few seconds later, when the two seismometers thudded into the muck below, that I realized my error. A quick calibration check revealed half of my worst fear: only the more sensitive one was working. With a sigh, I checked my orders.

The other four boreholes and cables were as expected, and nothing interfered with collecting the radiometer readings at the coordinates Homard provided. I turned on my radio.

“Pagurat here. I’m heading back to the airlock.”

“Thank you,” Mysina responded, a little too pleased with herself.

My nerves began to churn as I made my final approach and entered the airlock. Mysina drained the water and froze once she saw me head into the staging area near her station.

“I know that walk. What did you do?” She was frantic as she reached into my storage pod and picked up the damaged seismometer. “What did you do?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked as Homard entered the room and started on the rest of the straps. I shaded my eyes against the light Mysina had not dimmed for me.

“There’s marine snow in half the internal soldering. It will take me days to clean out and fix. What did you do? How did this happen?”

“An otodath attack.”

“You let it get that close?” Homard asked, standing still.

“No, I—”

“You’re better than this, Pagurat,” Homard said.

“It was an accident.”

“And until then, that defective seismometer is still out there!” Mysina was livid. “What if there’s a quake? If we wanted a bumbling job we’d have sent Trionat! You’re supposed to be better than this!” She was close enough to jab me in the thorax with a finger now.

“You didn’t use the buzz-gun early enough, did you?” Homard asked.

“Of course she didn’t,” Mysina interjected. “That would have been cruel. That would have been mean to the poor innocent sea monsters that keep breaking our cables and causing brownouts for 10,000 people topside, and we can’t have that! Just another piece of high-tech equipment for Mysina to fix with parts that won’t even be here until the next surface shipment. Nothing like redundant work to get the fluids moving, right?” Mysina stomped out of the room, leaving the damaged seismometer where it was, muttering, “incompetence” over and over.

“Don’t worry about her,” Homard said as he finished taking my kit off.

“Where’s Trionat? He’s usually here when I arrive.”

“He’s on a call with the topside supervisor.” Homard leaned in a little closer. “Something about a delay on the next shipment due to a windstorm.”

I looked at the damaged seismometer. “That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not. This really was the last thing we needed.”

I sighed, and noticed that the feeling was missing from most of my limbs.

“It’s proper otodath hours out there soon, so you’ll have to finish that segment replacement tomorrow. Log your activity and I’ll have an agenda for you like usual. Are you going to be all right?”

“I’ll be fine.” My limbs were numb and I was moving them without feeling them. “What’s for dinner tonight?”

“Vent mussels in plankton broth, I think. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

“Thanks.”

I still didn’t feel anything when I made it to my quarters. I stopped at the reflection in the view screen. It took me a moment to register that it was my own, and waving my various limbs at it did not make it feel any more mine. My gills flapped as my nerves rose, until I shut off every device and curled up in the sleep pond, shaking.

I was almost asleep when I heard the door buzzer. I lurched over to the door and opened it, my eyes landing on Homard and then the tray of vent mussels he carried.

“We missed you at dinner,” he said, raising the tray. “Are you all right?”

“I’ve been better.” I headed back toward the center of the room and Homard followed, settling next to me as I accepted the tray and started eating.

“Don’t let Mysina get under your shell. You’ve been around her long enough to know that she’ll find something to complain about no matter what.”

“That’s not it.” I slowed my eating. The plankton broth was less flavorful than usual, but I could not tell what was missing.

“You’re the best of us. You’ve always been. Not just anyone can swim out into the abyss to keep our whole society running.”

I looked in his direction and sighed, putting down the last vent mussel.

“Why so glum?” He put a limb on my shoulder.

“I tried so hard to become what this job needed me to be.” My eyes welled. “I spent three molts training and more down here, I molted until everything I was was what this job wanted, I gave up on ever seeing the sun again…and I’m still failing. I’m still not enough.”

“Pagurat…” Homard put a few more limbs on me, stroking my carapace.

“You know, I didn’t want this job. I’m here because I have a debt to pay.”

Homard’s limbs tensed, grasping into me as they froze. “Everyone I know would kill for your job, and you don’t even want to be here?”

“Homard—”

“I can’t believe it. I just can’t.”

“I was living a different life and it fell apart.” I met his eyes. There was judgment in them, but also something else. “This is how I’m getting it back.”

Homard resumed stroking, and I could barely feel it through my haze. He brought another limb into it. “Well, wanted or not, I’m glad you’re here.”

“I heard how you talked to me earlier. You’re just glad it’s me out there instead of you having to work around all those hungry otodaths and stay adjusted to the cold and pressure instead of what it’s like in here.”

“Well, that’s a pretty good deal for the rest of us,” he said, putting a hand on my pleon, “but that’s because it means you’re here.” He leaned in closer.

“Homard, I—” I reached for the hand on my pleon and he moved it farther in, toward my midline. I grasped it firmly to stop him. “We’re all almost prisoners here. We shouldn’t.”

“But you’re the best of us, Pagurat,” Homard intoned as he leaned in, bringing his mandibles to the edges of my thorax armor. “And I want to make you want to be here.”

I pushed him off me and stood. “You should leave.”

Homard looked up at me, eyes cold.

“Thank you for bringing me dinner, but you should go.” I gestured at the door.

“You won’t get a better offer,” Homard said as he walked out the door, leaving it open. I closed it behind him and collapsed against it. I was shaking, and I was exhausted, and in the meeting place of the two was a fitful sleep.

When I woke, my alarm stone was already buzzing and the agenda marquee was flashing “UPDATED SCHEDULE - REPORT TO AIRLOCK” in the shade of green reserved for oversleeping. I dusted myself off, shook a little to gain some composure, and headed to work. As I approached the final turn, I overheard my colleagues.

“You folching liar,” Trionat shouted.

“It’s true. She told me herself,” Homard said. “Can you imagine being that ungrateful for this kind of opportunity?”

“Well, I’m insulted,” Mysina said. “But I can’t say I’m surprised.” Trionat fumed and stomped, saying nothing.

“Every one of us dreamed of a posting down here, away from the hustle and bustle of the surface, making our whole species run,” Homard went on, “and here she is in the most important position of them all taking a spot that someone who loves this place could have had. It’s infuriating.”

Mysina’s tone took a turn for the impish amidst the beeping and clacking of her terminal keys. “I don’t think that’s why you’re saying all this.” She smirked. “Or was it Trionat’s quarters you left in a huff last night?”

“What are you implying?” Homard asked.

They could snipe like this for hours. I looked at the clock, sighed, and rounded the corner.

“Pagurat, is it true?” Trionat asked me immediately.

“Can we talk later?” I approached Mysina and the staging area where Homard had been preparing my kit for the day, eyes low. “I’m late.”

“Very,” Mysina responded, looking down her rostrum at me. “But you’re here now.” Glancing at her colleagues, she started her briefing. “You have three segment replacements to do today, along with a detailed survey of the new borehole site you checked out yesterday and the path where its cable will run. You’ll also have to have a look at borehole five manually, since it’s down a seismometer. Homard packed your kit already. Call in your approach when you’re done.”

“On it. Thanks, Mysina.”

“You’re welcome.”

I felt the cold water filling the airlock as if through a dream. I was swimming, my swimmerets pulsing at what felt like their usual speed, but nothing seemed connected to anything else. I had to feel my strapped-together cable segments harder than usual to find their catch and release one, and none of my tools seemed to be where they were supposed to be. There was none of the coordination of a few days earlier. Every sensation was muted, barely there against the staticky fuzz drowning my thoughts. It took everything I had to feel each bolt well enough to unfasten it without breaking something, and everything more to place the new segment and fasten it back into place. Another abyss delver might have been satisfied here, but this was sloppy work, not up to my standards. Maybe Trionat’s or Homard’s standards, but not mine. The next two were no better, but they would have to do. If I took any longer, I would run out of time for everything else.

The seismometer on borehole five was fine. Its calibration was a little off and it had clearly seen a few collisions, but it would not have been slated for replacement if it was something I could correct in the field. That left the survey of the new borehole site. I swam there without much trouble and began placing the survey markers when something rammed into me, sending me tumbling into the seafloor muck.

This otodath was larger than the others and its entire body flared angry red. Its spines showed the whitened ends of an especially old female, and they were abundant. I reached for my buzz-gun and found empty water. I did not spot the device loose on the seabed until the otodath had rammed me again, impaling my storage pod. When it pulled away, it tore the pod open, dispersing the tools and parts within. All I had left was the survey post I was holding and I interposed it between me and the beast’s next lunge, keeping my smaller thoracic limbs out of its snapping maw. I backed slowly toward the buzz-gun when it pulled away, keeping a limb near the ground to grab it once I arrived, but the giant sea-beast charged at me again with a new burst of speed. This time, its gill-plate spines drove into my thorax with a flash of white-hot pain, and then nothing. I pushed against them, but the monster started thrashing, trying to dislodge me on its own. I felt almost none of it after the first few seconds, not even its rough skin against my hands as I tried to push myself free. I only noticed that I had indeed come off and fallen to the seabed when I stopped moving downward. I reached for the fallen radio on the ground next to me. There were a few seconds of silence before Mysina started speaking.

“Pagurat, is that you?”

All she heard was the sound of the otodath sinking its teeth into my thoracic shoulder.

The humid chill of the cloud forest on Puntaren Rise was warm after the supercooled abyss. I was in the trees, feeling the saturated bark beneath my feet. They were stronger feet, with claws for grasping uneven branches, on long sturdy legs for climbing. My pleon was long and thin, back then, a counterbalance for jumping and an extra limb in a pinch. Life on land was challenging after adapting to the reef, but less so than I had expected. My body had to harden to support the weight that water no longer bore, but many of the other challenges were similar. Was it three years ago I was thus?

The sky flashed with lightning. I had to hurry. The mist orchids I was collecting for my horticulture experiment would have to wait. I needed more time to perfect the culture medium anyway. Settlement in the cloud forest was new, back then, and they had sent for expert gardeners from all the other ecozones to build what was to come. The lot of us were collecting the mist orchids because the architects had determined that their resin could help hold dwellings together. With enough of them breeding in the new town, it could be grown just as the coral cities had been grown. My days were, if anything, filled with more beauty than they had known on the reef.

It was cold, on those mountains, but the chill of the high-altitude mist kept that life slow and peaceful where the tropics moved quickly. It was not until my second training molt that my eyes adjusted to the aerial light and I could truly appreciate the beauty that was here, its rich greens, its moist browns, the waxy riot of color of every orchid. I had been so sure that my calling was in the coral gardens, but here, here I could see another future.

The sky flashed. I saw medical instruments, shell patchers, Trionat slumped in the corner shivering, Mysina shouting, “We’re losing the third maxillipeds! Homard! Get me another coral graft!”

Cold ocean water deep inside my shell. The otodath. She probably figured the site we weren’t already using was safe for her nest. How bad was the bite? I’m dreaming now. That’s why I’m back on Puntaren Rise.

“Stay with me, Pagurat! Homard!” Mysina’s voice.

Something heavy landing on the table. “Coral graft.” Homard.

“Now get a heat shawl for Trionat before he freezes to death. I told him not to go out there.” Mysina turned away from me. “Regulation says leave them if there’s no one who can get them safely, but you had to be the hero, didn’t you?”

It was the rafflote vines.

A few of us found them on the far edge of the forest. They were thick vines with orange flowers so large they could be patio roofs, with pleasant scents and edible fruits. We brought samples back to study. They infected everything. The whole town had to be abandoned. The thick vines were another plant, hosts to the orange parasite that spread across the test gardens and destroyed months of work. The smell drew haastors to the settlement that attacked workers, and the fruits turned toxic once the parasitic flowers were growing in mist orchids instead of their usual hosts. Six of my colleagues died, dozens more were injured or poisoned, and I was the last person left for the planners to blame.

“This…this can’t be right. Homard, Trionat, are you seeing this?”

They declared me liable for everything. That I was part of a team that brought them to the settlement labs meant nothing; the others were missing, or comatose, or dead, or well-connected. And they demanded I pay them back for their losses.

Something lurched toward me. “She’s…she’s…no, it’s too folching soon.”

No gardener job in the world would be enough to recoup a town and a horticulture lab in a lifetime. But a geotherm job would do it in a decade. I shed for this. In three molt cycles I said goodbye to the sun, and the warmth, and the cool montane mist, for my new abyssal life. I made my body for this.

“She’s molting.”

“But what…what could the past few months have trained her for?”

I upended everything I had left and even the very substance of my body to complete that sentence. Everything, I was, everything I am, remade to serve the billions of metric tons of frigid, dark, hypoxic water around me, the city above me, and the arbitrator taking payments for an infected lab site out of my earnings. Everything I am, remade to antagonize the ancient, deep-red otodaths that lived here before Mariana Station was built that even now tried to keep their nests in its shadow. I made my body for this.

And now, I was making it again.

The joint between my pleon and the rest of my body snapped. My new body started to scrape out of the resulting gap, starting with a few limbs that were much like the ones I had before. The new pleon inching out of the old was wide and laden with swimmerets like its predecessor, but a shimmer of blue-gray partly replaced its former abyssal red. My new carapace felt lighter than the one I was leaving behind. The truth of my new form did not become apparent until my forward limbs began to emerge. Three pairs of them pulled out of my old shell, crumpled structures that unfurled into wide, flat fins with bristly edges as my heart pounded blood into them. The scars of the otodath attack remained visible as my head and other limbs began to emerge. The maxillipeds around my mouth were rearranged into a feathery basket. My fins grew with each pulse and flap.

Homard spoke first. “Pagurat, you’re…beautiful.”

Trionat leaned on the operating table and looked up at my new fins, breathing heavily. One of his forelimbs, visibly crushed from the undersea pressure, slipped under his weight and he steadied himself. “How are you supposed to do your folching job looking like that?”

With a voice that was as new to me as it was right for this new body, I said, “I’m not.” I began walking toward the airlock.

“What are you doing?” Mysina demanded, interposing herself. “Whatever your new body is or isn’t capable of, you just barely survived an otodath attack and then molted. Your shell won’t be hard enough for the outside for hours.”

I swatted one of my fins against a nearby bulkhead, nearly ripping it from the floor and ceiling. The ocean sang in my mind. “I am leaving now.”

“You can’t leave.” Homard stood next to Mysina, limbs outstretched. “We need you here. None of us can operate outside like you can.”

“You could try.” I pushed them aside, watching their eyes widen at the strength in my new fins. “If it’s really such a desirable job.” All three of them followed me all the way to the airlock controls.

“What, you think we’re going to help you?” Mysina glared at me. “I don’t know who you think you are or what you plan to do, I’m not helping you strand us here unable to keep this place running.”

The urge to get out into the wide-open water grew louder in my mind. I approached the airlock and sank my claws into the door frame. After the first creak, the door opened on its own. I looked back and saw Trionat at the controls.

“What are you doing?” Homard asked him.

“What does it folching look like? I’m letting her out.”

The water against my shell felt better than it had in years.

It took hours to reach the sunlit waters above Mariana Station. My new fins were not fast, but they made the ascent less exhausting than it could have been. My new body adjusted more easily than I expected to the decompression. I paddled until I breached the water’s surface and landed with a satisfying crash, at last feeling the light and the spray and the warmth that the station would never let me enjoy. The diveflies hunted their prey around me, rattling the sky with their calls. Beneath me, the amphisards they hunted schooled and teemed, and between them all, the crashing waves filled my ears. I raised a fin into the air, held it there to dry in the sun, and then let it flop back to the water’s surface with a splash. The sky was bright, cheerfully clouded, and beautiful. I wanted to stay there forever.

What happened to me? My next molt was not due for months. Injuries could accelerate the molt cycle, but this much, with this many changes, had to be forming long before then. And why these changes?

I sculled my fins a bit, feeling the water against them, feeling myself move. Some of the amphisards got caught in my new oral limb basket and I treated myself to the snack. Mid-bite, the smell of land began to tickle my antennae, and I followed it, enjoying a few more snacks as I went. Land meant reefs. Reefs meant a home, with any luck. After another few hours of paddling, I saw the water become shallower beneath me, revealing corals and seagrass beds. A short while after that, I fell on a shoreline that arrived faster than I expected.

“It always gets you the first time,” an unseen voice greeted.

I looked up and found its source, a compact frame with long legs and large claws.

“Whatever you left behind, it doesn’t matter here.” She extended a claw and I took it. I flopped to my feet and took a moment to figure out how to put my fins away.

“Do people wash up on this beach often?” I asked.

She pulled me away from the shore, toward what looked like a small town. “Once or twice a year. I’m thinking of laying out some ropes, but the burrowcles would get in them and make them sharp.” She paused thoughtfully. “I’m guessing you had a run-in with one of those spiny red things. What did they call them, oatrats, otterbats…”

“Otodaths. A big female. I almost died. How’d you know?”

She turned around and flexed her small pleon, revealing the sites of three missing carapace plates. “Four molts and I’m still not over it. I think their saliva messes with our molt cycles.”

“That would explain a few things.” I massaged my injury, finding it only a little sore. I blinked. “You were a geotherm?”

“I lasted six molts down there before I bugged out. You probably replaced a few borehole sensors I installed. Miktyri.”

“Pagurat.” I watched a few others emerge into what looked like a town square. They kept their distance.

“The others look forward to meeting you, in their time.”

I looked around, at the huts, growing fields, and forests of this place. It was a small island, lush and not too wild.

“There’s more to see, if you’d like a tour.”

“I would.”

Miktyri showed me the coccolob farms she tended, the weirs others used to catch food, the amphitheater where a few residents had taken up new lives as actors, the mountain lighthouse whose operator kept his eye out for new arrivals, and finally, the path on the other side of the island with the easiest access to the surrounding coral. It could almost outdo the beauty of Warao Reef and Puntaren Rise alike.

“Miktyri…” I began, fumbling my words as I looked out at the blazing colors of the reef, “what do I do here?”

“Whatever feels right. It’s a simple life, and it’s what we make it.”

“I think…I’d like to be a coral gardener again.”

My name is Pagurat, I am 26 molts old, and I made my body for this.

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