It was a beautiful morning on the beach. The dark, troubled ocean whirled in the grip of red tide.

A coquina shell, washed violently ashore, kicked fruitlessly against the mud, gasping.

“I hate this sand, I hate this sun and I hate this blue sky,” he said. “Give me back my blood-thick sea full of thrashing.”

A sandflea heard the coquina’s voice, and hauled him into his burrow. There the coquina, on death’s door, was nursed back to health, taught to breathe air, and lived among the shore creatures for a time. The sandflea taught him as much as he could about the beach, the creatures there, and the coquina grew strong.

One evening the coquina, using his shell, clamped and crushed the sandflea and devoured him. In a passion, he tunneled back to the ocean, hungry to be in the dark angry water again.

But the ocean was not as he remembered it: it was pure, clean and untroubled. The red tide had passed.

The coquina returned to shore and dug a hidden burrow. There he used the knowledge he had gained to trap and murder sandfleas.

***
In time, the coquina found himself alone. All the smaller creatures of the shore had fled, and the coquina was too feeble now to travel after them.

One evening he sat outside his burrow, feeling a great loathing for it which he didn’t understand. He turned to crawl back in, but then stopped. He realized he could never go back inside. In a kind of trance, he immediately set out for the ocean.

As he grew closer, he felt deeply that he wanted to leave behind his shell, which had grown dark with blood, and somehow escape himself. He felt like his soul was covered in a thousand biting ants.

All his life he’d assumed there was a vast, deep pit continually sucking him in — now he realized he’d been forever willingly sliding down its slopes. The blood of every life he’d taken had done nothing to melt the frozen wastes encasing his heart and he knew now he’d die with it stopped in ice. He cried out in frustration.

At last he reached the shore, which was fierce and dark with red-tide, just like in his youth.

“Red ocean, why did you cast me out? I could have lived in peace in you forever. Instead you banished me and I became a taker of life.”

“Coquina,” said the ocean, “You would have made reasons to leave me eventually. You would have made reasons to reel in pain at the insult of your life. You were like the fish always searching for the hook, for a reason to reel, twist and curse. You can’t come back into me; I’ll not be your grave.”

And the Coquina understood, dying on the spot.

posted by Snail at 9:50 pm