By John Nolan
The shadow came first.
A sudden, vast eclipse of the sun-dappled ceiling of my world. We, the blush dart of my shoal, scattered like fragments of a broken mirror, our instincts screaming the ancient, cold warning.
I was a child of the deep currents, a creature of silent grace and the endless, sapphire twilight.
Then came the temptation. A small, shimmering thing, drifting downward.
“I want it.” I thought as I edged away from my family. “I want all of it.”
The snap was not a sound but a tearing. A sudden, vicious yank. I thrashed. A desperate, primal dance against an enemy I could not see, only feel as tension in my mouth.
I felt the barrier before I saw it—the surface. Not the smooth, soft mirror I sometimes glimpsed from below, but a jagged, blinding aperture.
It was not cool, nor warm, but a screaming absence.
And then the weightlessness left me. The sapphire blue disappeared, and there was only a new cold, frozen sea. Its jagged edges pushing against my scales.
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“This sushi is delicious,” said the man dressed as a penguin. “Go on, babe, you have to try some,”
“What’s in it?” She replied, staring at the morsel dangling from the two sticks in front of her.
“Salmon, I think,”
“I’m not a fan of Salmon.”
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