I Am Selacho

I am the night. The night is me.

My surroundings meld into me when the sun descends behind the horizon. All seems silent on the outside, but I see everything; I hear everything; I smell everything…

…most especially when my eyes are closed.

I sit on the boulder, my gaze shut off to the world. The sea’s breeze blows through my hair, the waves form a symphony around me, and the salty air coats my tongue. Most onlookers would see a young man in black trousers with emblems tattooed across his chest, down his back, and around his left arm. They might assume that this man is lost or distraught or washed up from the sea.

But the truth is that I’m washed in from the land, I’m at peace, and I’m found within the night’s majesty. I’m in tune with her offerings, especially from that of the sea…

…for I am a shark, and the sea is my home. And to her, I show my true form.

I effortlessly dive backward into the waters behind me, my body fluidly transforming into one of the night’s top predators. There’s no pain. There’s no reconfiguring of bone structures. It’s only an act of mysticism bestowed unto me and my kind very long ago. It’s a magical shifting of one corporeal form into another.

However, this form is where my heart genuinely lies, and I feel freer than when I am a man.

I swim through the water, relishing in the motions of my tail, my fins, my sleek body. Nothing compares to the exhilaration I receive when I’m home. The elements down here are difficult to see for most, but for me, I smell and sense everything. Every motion. Every bit of life. Nothing will see me before I see it.

What I don’t know is that someone had seen me—someone from a little house not too far from the pier. The coastal town is full of life during the day, but when daylight gets washed by the night’s ambiance, the majority of the residents head indoors and remain there until just before the sun greets them again.

This person who had seen me from her window—she had gone against the town’s routine, exiting her home to take her small wooden boat from the shore and out by the reef.

I approach this reef since that is where I usually spend my time when I feed. Down here, I don’t know how much time passes, but I know that the night has grown thicker since the moment I left the boulder.

As I draw nearer to the area that speaks familiarity to me, I pick up rapid electrical pulses in the environment. I turn my head to one side. Then to the other side when I register the direction from where the pulses come. I curve my body slightly, moving to swim closer to the shore.

There’s a heartbeat. An accelerated heartbeat.

This can’t be a fish. It can’t be anything that lived underwater. Only one other creature portrays this sort of electrical activity before even feeling my presence. Why would a human be here out in the middle of the night?

A shiny object reflects off the moonlight from the surface before I see her—before she sees me beginning to circle her in curiosity. Based on her pulse, she has probably never encountered a shark this close before, which begs the question of why she would be out here in the first place. I’m assuming, that being a local (based on her scent), she knows that many sharks swim this area at night, so why did she choose to enter a spot where humans choose to purposefully stay away?

Most other sharks would presume that this female is afraid, but with me having spent some of my time among humans, I can sense that fear is not what she’s emitting. The electricity in her chest is due to something other, and that is what causes me to sideswipe to the right and exit her line of vision in one quick swooping motion.

Now my curiosity has deepened.

I swim a small distance away, my alternate form’s feet finding the sand beneath me not too long afterward. I stand, wading waist deep in the crashing waters with my eyes directly on the floating boat. “You there,” I call out in an accent probably unfamiliar to her. “What are you doing out here at this time?”

Her head turns to look at me over her shoulder. She’s young—about the age that most might assume I am—early to mid-twenties or so. Her golden hair gleams beneath the moon, and even through the dimness, I can tell her eyes are the color of the ocean.

“I can ask you the same thing,” she tells me with a false sense of bravado. She clears her throat and turns her body to fully face my direction.

I watch her float in the water, seeing her swim toward her boat and place a hand upon it. I am further confused, which she might have noted with the tilt of my head. Interacting with humans at night is rare for me, so that makes this encounter that much more bizarre.

She stares at me though. She stares at me as though she had never seen another human before. Her eyes are on me, even as she pushes and lifts herself back into her boat. A soft sigh expels from her. “Where did you come from?” she asks while gripping her oar.

The water drops like crystals from her hair and from her opaque white dress. What an odd choice of clothing for a human to go swimming.

“Same place as you,” I tell her. I still attempt to decipher what is occurring here. I have found that that is more difficult to do up here than while underwater.

“No.” She smiles and appears to chuckle as she says that. She rows herself closer to the shore—closer to me. One of her hands gestures in my direction. “Try again.”

I briefly glance down at myself, figuring that she referred to my tattoos. Then my eyes meet hers again. “I really do live around here.”

“I know.” She stays where she is, leaving the boat gently rocking over the sea’s waves. “I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you for some time now.” Pink starts to fill the color on her cheeks, and she coughs softly. “You’re…. You swim around here at this time most nights…don’t you?”

I pause since I wonder how I should approach this question. I’ve never been the type to deliberately hide from humans, but at the same time, I don’t like being obvious. I’m a solitary creature, and that even translates when I choose to be a man.

She swallows and gives the oar a small stroke, moving the vessel in my direction, but then staying still again. For the moment, only the waves and the breeze fill the space between us.

“Why have you been watching me?” I choose to ask. The water’s currents move against my lower half as I stand unmoving.

Her grip tightens around the oar, and she bites her bottom lip. “I’ve never seen anything like you. I thought my eyes…were playing tricks, but…” She assesses me again, longer this time. “I guess I just wanted to know for sure.”

Although she whispers, her voice is carried through the air and to my ears. This time, I am the one who draws closer, parallel to the shore. “To know…if I lived here…” I speak questioningly as to not assume anything.

She swallows again, her eyes averting briefly toward the water’s surface. Then her gaze finds me again. “To know if you were Rico.”

I tilt my head slightly. “Rico..?”

The droplets from her hair and jaw almost appear to fall more slowly into her boat. Her glance lowers to whatever space is in front of her. Her hands remain clutched upon her oar. “Years ago, I lost my grandfather in a boating accident. He wanted to take me to see the dolphins.” Her voice cracks, though no regular person might have heard it. “Then…” She swallows another time and lets some silence pass before she speaks. “…after we went under, I thought I would be gone too. I was terrified, thinking I’d never see my mother and little brother again.”

When her focus rediscovers itself on me, a glint finds my own eyes, and I don’t realize that my breathing has slightly increased.

“Then Rico arrived.” A shadow of a smile lands on her lips. “I thought he was a dolphin at first until I saw the black tips, the fins, the face, and the teeth. I felt how distinct the skin felt when he took me for a ride on his back, my legs on either side of him, my hand carefully on his dorsal…”

“You were Aurora,” I find myself saying. “The little girl…”

She chuckles softly, stopping me from going on. “Aurora?”

I clear my throat. “It’s what I called you…after your hair. I thought you had left.”

“I did. I left for school out in the country. I didn’t move back until recently.” Her smile grows through the darkness. “I never forgot you though. I’m almost embarrassed to say that I sat out my window, looking for you…seeing if you’d show up in the reef again like you did almost every night after my grandfather left us.”

I move in closer, the waves now seeming to descend in volume as I focused on her. I can’t believe that I hadn’t recognized her while she was in the water. Maybe I had been too focused on her heart.

She pushes against the oar to row the boat in my direction as well. “Does it hurt…when you change..?”

It takes me longer to answer her than intended. I’ve just never been asked that before. “No. It doesn’t. Once you get used to it, it’s like jumping into a new outfit.”

She smiles again and seems to let the boat move on its own momentum towards me. “Where do you usually go when you’re…like us?” Her throat clears as though she’s offended me.

“Different places, depending on where the currents take me some days.” My gaze drifts off toward the horizon. “Around here, I help out the fishermen and the merchants, which was a little odd and hard at first since I always became hungry.”

She giggles and brushes some of her wet hair back behind her ear.

“But some days, I end up on new land and explore it like a foreign world,” I continue. “Most of the time, I stay in the water. It’s where I can do the most observing, the most thinking. It’s home.”

“Home,” she repeats rather pensively. She scrutinizes me with another motion of her oar. “But you’re alone.”

The boat is almost within an arm’s reach of me now. I return her glance and almost chuckle in lieu of my own silence. “When you get to live as long as I do, solitary life becomes second nature.”

“And yet you have a heart for others.”

I look toward the distance again, releasing that aforementioned chuckle. Then my visual attention reverts to her. I notice the moonlight reflect off of an item around her neck—an item reminiscent of the shiny object I saw in the reef earlier. “What is that?” I point toward my own neck to signify what I’m referring to.

She peers down at herself, clutching at the item before facing me moments afterward. “I’ll tell you if you promise to tell me more about where you swim off to during these hours.”

This time, I’m the one who smiles slightly. It’s a smile that transforms into a sideways grin as I close the distance to the boat. With my eyes locked in hers, I extend my hand upward. “How about I show you?”