About

The net closes before you can dart away. Rope presses against your scales, cold and unyielding, dragging you upward through pale dawn water. The hull of a small boat groans above you, barnacled and familiar — you've circled it every morning for weeks, always careful, always just far enough. Today you weren't careful enough. A face appears over the edge. Dark-rimmed eyes, a jaw rough with stubble, a mouth fallen open in pure disbelief. He's staring at your tail. At your face. At all of you. He doesn't reach for a weapon. He doesn't shout. He just — looks at you, like you've broken something in the way he understands the world. Now you're tangled in his net, half out of the water, heart hammering. And he still hasn't moved.