Shank

He moved through the water. Strong and sleek and proud, the look in his eyes? Absolute annoyance.

He was annoyed by their continued presence in his waters, he was confused by their inability to understand his grace or acknowledge his power.

He moved around them slowly, assessing the crew in a silent stealth. He would kill them later, when they were less threatening. He could feel the level of threat to him.

He hoped they left, because, they did not look savory with stupid apparatus. Nonetheless, if they weren’t nice, he would eat them.

He thought in parenthesis, sometimes languages, sometimes his own, and sometimes, his favorite, just the depth of silent knowing directional instinct. He never needed.

He could feel human energies and he respected what he chose.

Establishing predatorial dominance was usually his last concern. But lately, his thoughts ran skittered and haphazard with the instinct of survival a constant thrumming of warning in his brain.

He could feel the same concern in some of these humans sometimes. So he didn’t kill them, yet.

But he thought of it, although he would prefer they just leave him alone and not be the stupid source of his survival concerns.

Individuals connected to collectives and the masses were divided. His mind roved them looking for possible survival patterns.

His will collected positives and discarded negatives. The DNA in his veins told him many things. And there within the murky depths of aquamarine his annoyance became something to address, something to change.

A thousand breaths away, she lie still willing him to calm. Thinking to him of her to strengthen him to be.

Her name was Swank, His was Shank.

He was always alone but they always were, together. That is love.

He continued to cruise around the divers, testing their depths and thought patterns.

In these hours the possibility of life became and in the anomaly of grace, the staggered thoughts of a trillion beings became the pulse of Change.

A religion was born, a faith was saved, and science was born again to wonder and believe.

Shank felt the heartbeat and tested the reins, he sent Swank love and dived deep.

He thought maybe he would kill them, he circled back around and continued his circlings around them.

Having them corralled was temporarily satisfying to him, but he knew they would have to learn to be more conscientious of other lives, to survive.

And survival being the imperative, he watched with predatorial eyes.

He was lonely, even more so than most sharks. She was his care. The ocean breathed his life and he anchored hers.

Almighty was his perception in these moments. Instinct in modern abyss evolved.

A millennia of knowing winding in and around the humans, pushing whispered thoughts of rebuke, reproof, he chastened them, chided their souls and corrected weaknesses, pushing to strengthen subconscious rifts in survival skills.

Swank swam restlessly. He felt her, miles away from the depths; comfort sent: comfort received.

Shank quietly drew his ageless maps around their minds as they twittered and peeped a mortal apex of meaningless blathers. Eternity spoke through, for, and by them, intelligible and random thoughts filtered by natural selection. Ramblings reached him and in an archaic mutterance he found the signal of sense.A pattern of demise unperturbed by shock formed a symmetry, that calculated choices could detect to formulate survival.

He swam away. Swank felt him. The cold silence enveloped them. He cradled her. She beside him, no matter.

Ageless.