FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The constant pounding of the relentless waves and the cry of birds were the only sounds on the remote island. A scene that should have been one of exquisite beauty. Like a postcard a traveler would send to commemorate their visit to a tropical paradise with aquamarine waters and pristine white sands.

Birds of every description called to each other from the cloudless sky above the island and the dense wall of trees delineating the narrow beach. Black frigatebirds on perches in the trees cried out to each other as they came and went from hunting trips in the open ocean offshore. Strikingly colored lorikeets wheeled around and just above the coconut trees. Flashing their crimson breasts as they flitted from roost to roost. Below, purple hermit crabs scuttled along the beach. Searching for food in the safety of their shelters from the predations of the strutting avian cohabitants sharing the sands with them. The sound of the diverse range of birds a musical counterpoint to the thunder of the surf.

Overgrown pathways from long since vanished inhabitants trailed through the coconut trees and thick vegetation inland. Leading to clearings where villages once stood that were already well on their way to being reclaimed by the verdant flora rife upon the island. The crisp tang of the briny water being underlain by something fouler. Something that despoiled the untainted aura the island should have enjoyed in its dreamlike splendor.

Tonnes of plastic waste and garbage littered the soft white sands of the beach. Detritus from far off civilization gathered here by immense transoceanic currents to be dumped onto this Garden of Eden. This Nirvana. Plastic cast-offs of cultures whose concerns lay far from remote foreign shores and the beauty that had been tarnished out of sight of regulators and public outrage. Putrid rot of entangled vegetation and stagnant water adding a miasma where none belonged.

Every day, tens of thousands more pieces were deposited. Sun-bleached and brittle from ultraviolent exposure, the eternal churning of the tides steadily broke the flotsam into scrap that could be mistaken as a source of food by the local wildlife. Killing them slowly as the indigestible bits accumulated in their bellies.

A wave crashed and rolled up the beach, and in a blink, the receding water found five new impediments to drain around in the legs and tail of the creature standing in the froth. With its sudden appearance, a blanket of silence befell the bird-life of the atoll as they warily observed this new presence. Waiting to discover if this sizeable being was a menace to them before they could return to their caroling flight. The creature stood nearly motionless for hours, with its only movements being the gossamer threads and the shimmering fins dancing in the coastal breeze. A living statue of almost infinite patience and understanding that awaited the melody of the island to gradually return to its regular cheerful cadence as the inhabitants grew inured to the great creature that had popped into the world without fanfare.

The alien stood on splayed limbs in the churning ocean water with its muscular bulk deepening its impression by the minute. Sinking into the waterlogged intertidal sand with every cycle of the water's motion washing over the four long clawed fingers of each webbed paddle-like foot. The creature could only be an alien, for Earth had never seen its kind beyond the realm of fantasy before.

As sea creatures go, it was markedly smaller than most. Although that may have been misleading if it was not fully grown, given how little there was to know about the species of being under observation. At the shoulder, the lithe creature stood one and a half meters tall. Just short of a human teenager on the cusp of adulthood, the length of its serpentine neck standing ready to add considerably to its height. While from the rounded tip of the lengthy snout sprouting from its wedge-shaped head to the farthest reaches of the fins growing from the dorsal and ventral surfaces of the idle tail upon the ground, it measured seven and a half meters long.

In proportion, it was split roughly into thirds--a third each for the neck, torso, and tail. The long body had the uniformity of a legged snake with very little change in the creature's diameter from the top of the neck to the very end of the tail. The variation to that uniform thickness of body was a mild broadening to accommodate the shoulders and hips from which the formidable legs grew and a gradual tapering at neck and tail just where the head and the backwards swept tailfin joined the body.

Sinuous in appearance and motion, the intelligent being turned upon itself to walk its front legs towards one of the semi-hidden trails as its body wound to catch up. At long last, the tail fin pivoting with a flick before bands of smooth muscle fiber rippled backwards from the hips to hoist the tail until only the lower edge of the scythe-shaped fin trailed through the sand and dirt. The incredible flexibility and strength of the vertebrae on display as it walked by how its body bowed and flexed. Flowing around the trees like water as the tan-colored scales it had on the beach darkening until they matched the undergrowth through which it trod with heavy thumps that betrayed the weight of the creature on its webbed paws and talons.

A burst of activity in the trees overhead gave the interloper pause. Thread-like tendrils extending from rays supporting the curtains of its ears rose to bristle outwards. Flaring to life as a spectrum of yellow shades rippled along the ribbons to the small bulbs at the end of each filament. The bulbs glowed brightly as if to communicate some unknowable message before the light faded and receded back up the tendrils to where they connected to the sides of the head. A pair of long whiskers, dangling from the rear corners of the large nostrils on the sides of the snout, rose and danced in undulating streams next to the creature's upturned muzzle before falling slack once more.

Two sets of eyelids blinked over the constantly shifting colors of the eyes the alien had trained on the birds flitting above. One pair solid and covered in the same unyielding mesh of scales that blanketed the entirety of its body. The second pair consisting of transparent shields, which briefly dampened the vibrancy of the irises' coloration and that left fresh moisture gleaming in the turgid air across the liquid and shifting colors surrounding the vertical pupils. The inner lids shot across the width of the visible eyes perpendicular to the thicker and better guarded outer eyelids to leave an unbroken shield without a single aberration to block the sight of the eyes beneath.

A wave worked its way down the alien's neck, sending the head swaying and bobbing as bands of green and yellow played across the creature's scales in a chaotic display of light. Drawing several different species of bird to land on its back as it stomped its paws while rocking back and forth in a rhythm tuned to the patterns of luminescence. The birds chirped and sang to each other as they joined with the whistling produced by air flowing past opening slits that exposed royal blue-colored organ tissue along its neck with each raspy breath the alien took through the large nostrils at the end of its snout.

Seemingly enjoying itself, the long serpent-like being began making a heavy bass humming that passed through the long and sturdy four clawed fingers of each paddle-like paw into the sand. Energizing the individual grains of sand and dirt into jumping in waves as infrasound passed through the soil. It would be hard to judge the mood of such a creature based on what was seen and by its actions, given its unknown nature. But, when the birds flew back to their perches above, there was no mistaking the happiness in the bounds of the creature as it wormed its way to its destination tens of meters ahead.

Breaking into the clearing in a shower of pollen, the mighty creature shook itself. Sending the fins running its length slapping against a fine coating of slick oil that kept its scales glistening in the harsh glare of the tropical sun. In addition to the fan-shaped fins on each side of its head, conspicuously surrounding large openings with hinged flaps that resembled ear canals, other membranes were sprouting from the top and bottom of the unknown being's form.

Twin parallel ridges starting on the bridge of its nose ran to the back of the head, where they grew taller and softer until the membranes became willowy enough to stir in the breeze. The fins continued from the head all the very long way to the tailfin at this larger size. Another pair of fins, seen from the side and similar in design to the dorsal pair, erupted from the lower belly of the creature just forward of the hind legs to decorate the tail. On the bottom of its snout, two much smaller, more rigid fins adorned the lower jaw along the outer edges to trail off just behind the thick knot of jaw muscle anchoring the corners of its mouth.

As the creature paced around the clearing with its curious gait, examining its surroundings with sight and the touch of its long whiskers, the same shifts in color seen earlier on the scales bled over into the fins as well. At times making the creature challenging to observe as it matched its surroundings. At other times indicating when it found something of particular interest by flashing patterns nearest what had grabbed the attention of the inquisitive myth. Signaling intent and thought before any movement to investigate. Arcs of shifting hue and shapes shimmered across the surfaces of the being's scaly covering in cadences that, if observed long enough, were easy to see syntax and meaning in. Not a sound intelligible to human ears had the creature made yet, but it had nonetheless communicated things to the readers' unseen metaphorical eyes. Even if the reader might find themselves lacking the biological intricacies and knowledge to decode a language that was part sound, part light, and nearly entirely beyond the range of their senses.

A myth is what was being observed here. There could be no doubt about the nearest analog on Earth, and that parallel existed only in fantasy before this day. This was a representative of a species chosen from its aquatic home, at the extant race's explicit approval, on a planet existing in the Andromeda galaxy. A species that had explored the peculiarities of their home solar system using biological technologies catered to their unique attributes. Drawing the attentions of the same inter-dimensional intelligences that were training their powers onto the wayward self-styled masters of the third rock from the sun. These intelligent spacefarers had a special mission far removed from what the Children of the Egg and their minders had in the millennia ahead. What that was, was to be revealed in the months ahead.

Across the Earth, thirty others just like this sea creature appeared on remote islands, atolls, and isolated coastlines to begin their tasks. As the chaos that humans would one day soon call "Zero Day" manifested itself near the world's poles with the first humans to undergo transformations of breathtaking scope, hundreds were about to go missing. Only to reappear at the locations chosen by the aliens walking empty beaches and oceanside forests. Hundreds that would quickly become lost in the tumult to come as First Contact and the terrible price humanity would pay became clear. A project that was vital for the success of the test being conducted on the main continents of Earth by alien brethren of the aquatic creature gamboling around the deserted island.

These humans would soon willingly volunteer to become the minders of the greatest treasure the Earth had.

Done sensing the ground with its hyper-sensitive whiskers, the closest thing to magic that the island it stood on would ever know occurred when another sea creature of similar appearance popped into being. This creature, much smaller and with subtle differences in its base coloring, had eyes of unbroken gold. A characteristic that humans around the world would swiftly learn to despise in the coming years.

Bamboo structures with wooden tiled roofs began to fade into existence in the clearing with a gentle sighing of displaced air as more and more material materialized. Extending in rows that arose from the ground, they faced each other on opposing sides of the opening in the forest cover with another circular construct in the very center.

In a rectangle now stood fifty lofty bungalows measuring four meters tall to the eaves of their roofs and fifteen meters on each of their spacious sides set just above the ground on small round pylons with overhanging roofs of layered wooden shingles and open sides. An extensive set of mesh doors spanning two meters across with spring-loaded double-action hinges stood at the top of a small flight of steps. Large openings for the breeze sweeping through the glade framed the door and the back wall facing the forest with screening bug nets and privacy curtains tied to the corners of the pillars at the edges of the door frame and each corner. Leaving little more to support the sloping roofs than the two side walls and the pair of mid-floor posts on each open end.

In each lodging, furniture grew as if the pieces were living things. Forming two hammocks off to one side with soft blankets and twin pillows weaving themselves into form before settling into neat piles within the cocooning beds. Squat chests, full of loose sets of shorts, tops, towels, various toiletries, and sandals resting on top, evanesced at the foot of each hammock base. Many more pillows, in aquatic colors, spun into existence in a round circle surrounding a low table that had appeared just past the entrance pillars in the middle of the floor with plenty of room to spare. In one bungalow, burned into the table's surface, was an image of a mighty whale breaching the ocean's surface. Every detail of the amazing humpback whale was rendered in impeccable detail as if a sketch had frozen the aquatic mammal in an instant of time.

Against the walls and away from the hammocks, small desks grew along with simple stools nestled beneath them. A non-descript laptop and cordless phone of unknown make, neither with any visible connections or power sources, appeared next to each other on the desks. Folded and stored beside these kiosks were an array of privacy panels decorated with vintage Hokusai prints awaiting the usage of the absent tenants of every cabin.

That was not the only art to adorn each hut, however. Paintings and imagery of sea life and reefs appeared on each wall. Leaving some mystery as to how each scene was displayed as none showed any sign of framing. Nor a process to animate the ripple of the waves or the movements of the wildlife in each depiction. If all this were not indicative of magic, then some technology was at work far beyond the capabilities of the humans that called Earth home.

At each corner of the rectangle of cabins and each side of the grand circular structure stitching itself slowly together, holes appeared and drilled down deep into the earth. Clusters of bamboo pipes appeared growing up from these holes as briny sea-water burbled and overflowed from them until they were capped by a wide rectangle of solid metal that gleamed emerald green in the early morning sun. Truncated pipes and hoses ran from one side of this mysterious box, serving no purpose until they attached themselves into and through the walls that grew before them.

Large utilitarian shower stalls, each three meters wide, and large adjacent floor-to-ceiling mirrors interchanged around the walls of the bathing area. In a separate room, toilets of a curious squat stool-like nature stood in their own little cubbies behind free-swinging doors. A more enormous pit blossomed open in front of each wash closet as if the very earth were a budding flower as an elaborate outdoor bath developed. Crystalline water fed from the mysterious green boxes had lost its saline properties as it flooded each of the outdoor baths with all their many stone benches and trickling waterfalls to add to the relaxing atmosphere.

Each bath was of a different design that would only serve to delight the future occupants of the still-developing paradise on this remote island. Carved sea-life decorating the fringes of the pool with mouths open as if to cast showers of water upon the bathers at their request. Bobbing fountains that couldn't possibly be actual living representations of the plants they resembled floated here and there, shooting mists of water into the air that smelled of a heady mix of minerals and aromatics. Scents that imbued the clear water with a slight tinge of the same green that had already been purified from it. Ribbons of heat wavered close to the water's surface as the smell of the relaxing soak grew even more poignant and enticing. The water was a caress of one's senses even as it worked to loosen weary muscles and aching joints.

If the artificial onsen near the corners were big enough for a dozen to comfortably stretch out in, the two that had formed beside their baths alongside the oval centerpiece of the colony could fit a hundred individuals in each of their lagoon-like embraces. The purpose of such grandiose designs and the strange dimensions of the other facilities were not to be revealed yet, dear readers, so our unlearned observations must continue without understanding the significance of what we saw. Neither the golden-eyed clone of the serpentine creature nor the one seated with eyes closed and its body curled upwards in a horseshoe shape to plant its hindquarters on the ground was forthcoming as to their designs.

The circular centerpiece of the habitat had grown the very pinnacle of its sloping roof, with a small round cap over an opening to allow accumulated heat to vent, as the furnishing beneath appeared to arrange themselves.

A central area taking on the appearance of a bar and grille developed as the focus of the remainder of the structure. The cooking area settled into existence with racks full of a complete complement of wooden mugs, bowls, plates, and utensils. Gleams of light heralded the appearance of a quartet of sinks and reflective stainless-steel appliances that thrummed with power presumably being provided by a black box mounted high above on one of the beams supporting the roof five meters above the ground. Walkways on each side of the mirrored back-to-back rows of appliances separated them from the outer perimeter of the service island, where the sinks were accompanied by a pair of grilles and preparation counters. Multitudes of beverage dispensers protruding from wooden arches perched over grated metallic drains appeared formed, finished, and ready to serve. On the other side of a low banister was an encompassing platform with sturdy but straightforward-looking stools placed every few meters beneath around the circumference.

Clustering around this source of food and beverage were ten more low-slung tables akin to the design of those in the huts on the outskirts and surrounded by their own allotment of pillows to allow for groups of ten to easily find enough room to stretch themselves out at their leisure. Leaving ample space between each human around the tables. From the design of the communal area, it could only be guessed that intermingling of guests was to be the intended effect. Much effort seeming to have been doled out to encourage the inclusion of all with the circular nature of every seating arrangement. Given the tribal and fiercely hierarchal nature of human society, how that worked in practice remained to be seen.

Small solid wooden cabinets appeared here and there between the seating areas filled with wooden game boards and pieces to complete the last of the furniture. Tapestries rustled into being to unfurl from the rafters of the soaring roof and display stunning montages of sea life. Moving images of impossible quality appeared on the woven bamboo screens. Light sconces grew from the structural posts rising from the wooden plank flooring of the gathering place. Taking on the appearance of marine shells with small levitating orbs of unknown design hovering above the opening of the spiraling artifices.

Again, the size and design of the central structure of the newly formed colony were of a scope that hardly seemed reasonable. The pillows of a hardy and resilient weave numbered in the hundreds around the tables that were an incongruous half a meter above the floor. Each pad a gentle blue or green and measuring a meter squared, forming a sense of being in the water with their piles. The tables measuring four meters across, unreasonably excessive for any possible arrangement of meals, had grand depictions of scenery seen from the coastal regions across the world. The game pieces hidden within their cabinets, of sizes that hardly made sense, counted among their number such oddities as chess pieces that stood two decimeters tall and weighed a kilogram each--the wooden bowls and mugs behind the serving counter of exorbitant size and design. Barely looking as if they could be held within human hands at all with their curious handles and not to be hefted lightly.

A sigh from the waiting scaled creature at the receipt of a subsonic signal from the golden-eyed engineer sent its gill flaps aflutter as the air blew against its typical path. Letting the being with the color-shifting eyes know that the construction orchestrated by an agent of what its people called The Oldest was complete. Opening both pairs of eyelids, its jaws gaped wide to display a dark mouth and pointed tongue with twin sets of triangular teeth in staggered formations. A systematic procession to stretch out tension from taut muscles that worked its way back along the length of its body as it rose from its crouch. Checking with its own eyes that every comfort had been seen to in case the narrator relating these events had been negligent or forgetful of some detail.

The creature loped around with an investigative air, sticking its snout into each structure in a systematic double-check that relied on its own senses as opposed to any of the technological wizardry that had grown these buildings. It paid particular attention to the green metal rectangles behind each lavatory and the black box that powered everything in the central pavilion. As if it had never seen anything like them before and was trying to discern their design by leaning in close to let its whiskers brush across their surfaces and pat at the ground around them. Finished inspecting the work of the other, the curious beast returned to its position in the middle of the open area beside the eastern bathhouse. The golden-eyed creature, watching the explorer as it completed inspections of what it already knew to be perfect, flowed with undulating grace into the serving area of the kitchen.

Duplicating itself en route, the two golden-eyed lithe beings stretched themselves out behind each of the bars. Both forms growing until they were a meter taller and five meters longer. Flopping the lengths of their substantial tails with their towering caudal fins across the serving counters with twitches of powerful muscle fibers. Each sent their two whiskers out, questing and touching across all the surfaces within the considerable reach that their long necks could bring their heads to. Ready to use the mobile tendrils of muscle and nerve to dispense the alcohol and food that humans frequently used to make themselves feel better in stressful situations. Calling up in their heads complex menus that they would use to grant any request for libation or food from an infinite number of realities that overlapped the present one this story occupied.

It was too easy for them to bring a mug of beer or a plate of prawns from Universe 1.3A55^67.9945BH when their realities overlapped for 10^-21 seconds. All you had to do, was know how to open the gate. Unfortunately, or fortunately, it might be said, the human species would never exist long enough to learn this simple trick. Admittingly, it had taken the species of bio-computers that the golden-eyed sea creatures were from nearly five million years to learn the trick themselves.

What wasn't easy, and the part with the greatest prospect of failure was yet to come. The cooperation and participation of the residents for who this whole endeavor was for. Across the world, a program had been acting out in the dreams of selected individuals for months prior to the initiation of Zero Day.

Alien computers in the guise of infantile black dragons taken from a species scattered by an invading force millions of years ago known as the Children of the Egg toiled to ready the human world for the changes to come. These artificially intelligent imitations of life forced many to participate in a challenge that they never knew was coming to prove that humanity could responsibly manage their affairs and take their place on a stage that had been forbidden them for their immature ways. The last chance to correct the injury inflicted upon the world was given by a race of extra-dimensional race who calculated they could serve two purposes at once. While millions across the world screamed in horror as the bodies of their loved ones bent and twisted into new forms straight out of fantasy, a much more select cadre of individuals received their own invitations.

As those chosen for the dubious honor of forcibly having their lives and humanity stolen from them to pave the way to a brighter future for all roared in agony in the throes of their metamorphoses, volunteers quietly set their lives in order to undertake some adventure they felt calling out to them. These chosen were the outsiders, the dreamers, the naturists, and the adventurous. Of those, an even smaller contingent was bound for locales such as the island that had consumed our interest so far.

A married man and woman, retired Maori conservationists who volunteered in cultural centers in Christchurch, had agreed to come to protect the water so important to their culture. Appearing asleep in their hammocks side by side with content smiles on their faces. They were only two of twenty of the native peoples of Aotearoa to answer the call to come to this blighted and abandoned island. All feeling the powerful connection between their culture and the oceans. Two more couples arrived asleep to their own bungalows, but the rest were unattached at their appearance in the open area flanking the eastern bathhouse.

An Ecuadorean research biologist and her husband, taken from the scientific vessel anchored off the shoals of the Galapagos islands, appeared bewildered before the lying and watchful serpentine creature. Yelling in shock and jumping to hold each other with their alarm at a creature that should not exist. Thirty more explorers of knowledge from nations circling the pacific rim joined them in stricken terror at their sudden relocations.

Thirty men and women comprised of ecologists and guides from the islands spread across the vast Pacific Ocean in the Polynesian and Micronesian territories popped into existence with wondering looks on their faces. Giddiness at the realization that what they had agreed to was actually real and not the production of discontented imaginations. A frail elderly man and his equally aged wife from the Ulithi atoll looked about with a resigned air to their weary-lined faces and stoic acceptance.

The remaining balance of eighteen men and women appeared to complete the full complement of one hundred for this island outpost. A woman, wearing the military uniform of the United States of America's Navy, had come from Guam, joining a quartet of concerned Japanese as the only to appear in martial dress. A man and a woman from New Zealand dropped the scuba tanks they were wearing and grabbed their heads as the world spun dizzily. Being helped by the remaining odd mixture of their fellow transplanted.

Only in the coming days would the purpose and meaning of their sudden teleportation to this location be fully explained to the increasingly green-looking volunteers. For now, the watching female decided a warm welcome was finally warranted to all those seeking understanding.

Flashing lights passed over her skin and her sensors in a call to have all eyes on the one of few tides. She quickly twisted and writhed out the complex motions of a land-based welcome to those who watched non-plussed before finishing with a greeting she had learned in her preparation to help the strange mam-mals reclaim the balance of their waters. She mimicked the odd white mam-mal with the stick and bushy moss growing from his snout in the mo-vie with perfect pitch.

"Welcome, to Jurassic Park..."

Behind the front rank of people watching her with gaping mouths, the man and woman from New Zealand led thirty others in vomiting on themselves and falling unconscious as a result of the spatial and temporal disorientation they'd just suffered. Startling many of the others into screaming and running to play a game of hide from the current. So'waa'Ma'wae was most distressed. The golden-eyed ones had said nothing about this greeting ritual. She wasn't even hungry!

*****

Jasmine awoke with a gasp and her chest heaving beneath her oversized shirt. Reaching up to touch her thundering heart as she blindly reached out for the hand that she saw extended in an invitation to her in her mind's eye. Next to her, Martin tossed in the throes of his own dream. Locked into the nocturnal fantasy so thoroughly that nothing his girlfriend did could awaken him. Jasmine's eyes were blank as words tumbled softly from her lips with a sigh just as they did from Martin's.

"With all that I am... I accept... I will help... I will give my body...."

Thumping back against her pillows, she returned to sleep. Not noticing the hand that stayed over her heart, the peaceful smile curling her lips, or that her other hand had met her boyfriend's. Joining with him in a decision that they wouldn't remember making. By the time they awoke the following day, not even the moisture of their sweat was there to remind them of their interrupted sleep. It was a pattern that they had, sometimes even fleetingly and imperfectly remembering, been unconsciously experiencing for months before the fateful day of First Contact.

They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning,

No-one you see, is smarter than he,

And we know Flipper, lives in a world full of wonder,

Flying there-under, under the sea!

Brrrt...

Everyone loves the king of the sea,

Ever so kind and gentle is he,

Tricks he will do when children appear,

And how they laugh when he's near!

"Ugh..."

Thump.

They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning,

No-one you see, is smarter than he,

And we know Flipper, lives in a world full of wonder,

Flying there-under, under the sea!

"Did you just kick me out of bed again?"

"I don't know. Did you just fart in bed again? Oh, gosh. I can taste it! You animal!"

They call him Flipper, Flipper...

A slim-fingered hand daintily reached out from beneath a blanket over the man floundering around on the floor to silence the cell phone playing the alarm on the nightstand.

"Can't we play something else in the morning? I hate that song...."

"Still no call to fart in our bed over it, you big grumpy hippo."

"Oh? How else will we ever learn to embrace the floor every morning at six am?"

"What are you...oof!" The blankets wrapping the feminine figure on the bed were pulled to the wood floor of the tiny one-bedroom apartment. Eliciting quiet giggles from both the man on the floor and the woman on top of him. A well-toned bare leg extended and threw itself over the squirming partner lying beneath to lithely swing her into the mount position. Displaying gray cotton panties when the oversized t-shirt rode up to reveal a scandalous amount of skin and undergarment.

"Jasmine, we need to...."

The protest ended with the sound of a soft, breathless moan and the touch of two pairs of lips. The enshrouding blanket being shed to reveal the woman straddling her partner before she bent forward to press her lips hungrily against his own as her hair spilled down to curl on the floor. Rocking her hips on top of him, his hands raised to rest on her slim waist as she kissed him one final time and then rose on her limber legs to leave him unfulfilled where he lay on the ground. With a sigh, his head thumped against the floor as Jasmine, the eternally energetic, bounced to her feet to dance across the bedroom towards their restroom.

"C'mon, we don't have time for that this morning. I have an eight AM with the girls, and we still need to get our run in. Up! Up! Let's go! 5k lazy bones!"

"I don't think that is a good...." Martin Garcia started, as his t-shirt was thrown to cover his eyes as his beloved skipped out of the room wearing little to contain her.

Not that Jasmine Irving had any cause to complain as she loved her slim figure and the way it let her cut through the water. Maybe there once was a time that she had wished her breasts were larger or her hips were wider as she watched her hands braid the strands of brown hair that fell to the middle of her back in a mirror. But at twenty-five, she was in the prime of her life and loved herself for who she was. Proud of who she was. A half American, half Filipina woman.

Reaching out to her reflection, she traced the curve of her jaw, the width of her nose, and the outlines of her narrow eyes with their epicanthic folds. Opening her thin but enticingly curved lips, she smiled at herself. Delighted with the way her grin made her eyes twinkle with energy and the dimples that formed in the soft golden-brown tones of her skin. Trailing her hands down, the rasp of the slight callouses on her hands scraped along the sensitive skin of her chest, causing her to shiver. Running her hands down over her toned tummy, she followed the contours of her body down and around to her firm rear and toned legs from countless miles of swimming and bicycling. A shadow of a frown dimming her smile as she wondered just why Martin would never join her on two wheels.

Bringing her hands back up to her belly, a different kind of smile graced her lips as she imagined that toned waist swelling with life. A barely audible sigh passing through her lips as she relished the maternal aspect of her daydream and the future that it represented. It had all started with the pregnant girls at work. She knew that was the source of her longing. Although knowing that didn't make it any easier for her. The water was her life, and she and Martin had not married yet. They loved each other. That was why they had been willing to take the leap and give themselves to each other for the first time before they were wedded. But they still wanted to be one in the church's eyes for any future children's sake.

Yesterday threw the surety that one day they'd have children into doubt. At least if Martin had anything to say about it. Jasmine didn't think anything had changed down at the level that would matter to them. A message from beyond? Great! A new chance to make friends with people from the stars! No nukes? Also awesome! What good was it to be able to turn a city full of loving people into crispy tater tots anyway?

A voice broke her brief worry, snapping her back to the cheerful mood that she so much preferred.

"Más hermosa que todas las aguas del mundo."

"Oh!" Jasmine squealed in false outrage, arms flying up to cover her chest as she spun to face Martin with her newly formed ponytail whipping behind her. Giving him an indignant and entirely artificial glare.

A slight blush was darkening the olive tone of Martin Garcia's skin as he stood before her in just a pair of running shorts. Although he asked her to make love not five minutes prior, he was still such a gentleman when faced with her nakedness now. In one hand, he held out for his love her favorite sports bra and jogging skirt with a sly grin breaking across his narrow and handsome face. Thin lips and high cheekbones gave him a stern masculine look that was betrayed by his dark brown eyes and the soft lines they were set in as he admired the beauty of his love. Short chocolate brown hair stood in rumpled tufts, typical of his casual disregard for the state of the strands that Jasmine so enjoyed running her fingers through when they lay together cuddling at night.

Standing only slightly taller than her 1.62 at 1.68 meters, the twenty-six-year-old man was of a slight build that complemented his own aquatic work well and showed the broad shoulders and tapering upper back of someone who spent many hours swimming. He did not have much muscle bulk to his frame, prioritizing clean eating and light resistance work to keep slim instead. With an easy, charming smile, and a compassionate look, Jasmine knew that she had someone whose appearance was only the start of everything that made him remarkable.

"You dare call my coconuts mushy? My firm, perky, beautiful coconuts?"

"Uh...what? That's not what I said at all!"

"Ang ganda mong batang uto. Mahal ko kapag namula ka."

"Um... three?"

Peals of melodious laughter filled the apartment as Jasmine wrapped her arms around Martin with far more force than her slight frame would suggest she was capable of. Picking her dear clean off the ground with a slight flexing of her legs and thrust of her hips.

He is just the cutest! Does he even know that he's this adorable?

Martin, for his part, was trying to avoid thinking about his nearly naked lover pressing herself firmly against him. They still did have to go for a jog, after all, in public. To dampen his enflamed response, he tried to think how he would bring up the recurring lucid dreams he'd been having lately. Wondering what to make of the fact that he heard her voice echoing the exact words he said to the phantasms that slipped from his waking mind in the morning.

"Let me ask you something, Jazz...." He said, trying to bring up what lay heavily on his mind after their run through the deserted streets of their town. An attempt to get Jasmine to accept the reality that her occasionally unreasonable optimism prevented her from seeing. In his opinion.

"Does this swirl in my yogurt look like a crocodile?"

"These dreams we've been having and what happened yesterday...."

"Because if you turn it this way...oh...that...."

"I know that you don't think there's much of a connection between our dreams and all the nuclear bombs of the world launching into outer space...

"But between that and that message that no one seems to know how to acknowledge yet...."

A pair of her fingers reached up and grabbed a lock of her hair. Twisting it back and forth in a way that showed her deep in thought. Pushing her yogurt cup back and forth with the spoon in her other hand. She made a few more orbits with the cup and then looked up with her expressive umber eyes through her bangs at her beau.

"Look at this from the point of view that I've been thinking about with will you please, my love? We didn't die yesterday in a nuclear attack. That message, even if it were from aliens, as everyone supposes, did it change our lives? Do you think that our rent won't be due before the 5th of next month? That our lives our will suddenly be sent down some new track? Maybe... Maybe seeing the world through a lens where the glass is always full is leading me astray here. But I think we need to continue living our lives the way we have because we always remember to consider the needs of others alongside our own. Could we genuinely sin with that love for our fellow humans and for God in our hearts?

"I think... I think that your fears are representations of your concerns for the future after what happened yesterday. Last night... when I think that I came to a conclusion after all the chaos we saw yesterday. I felt at peace."

"At peace?"

"I felt like I had made a choice that would settle our futures." She reached out and grabbed his hands to bring to her heart, where she covered them with her own. "Our futures."

His mind whirled in confusion. That had been what he had felt too. How could this be?

"Is it... is it a subconscious expression of our doubt?" Jasmine asked aloud. Echoing both their thoughts. "It could be. But what decision could I have made that I wouldn't remember? It seemed so important. Like I was going... like I was going home with you. That is what I do remember. You. You were always with me."

"I wish we could remember...."

She shrugged, dismissing the feeling of uncertainty that had fallen over her. Knowing that it was not something to fret over. If it was a message from an Angel or a higher power that she could scarcely dare think would contact her, then her absolute faith would lead her. If not... Well... then... dreams couldn't affect your real life. It was the other way around! She would find what was bugging them and fix it to make their dreams better. That's what she would do. Nothing kept Jasmine down!

"Well..." she said, squeezing his hands before letting go. "Maybe we should keep dream journals or record what we say in our sleep. And...and... that will prove how many times you soil yourself in the bed!"

"I'm not the only one...." Martin grumbled, pushing himself back to clear the table.

"Lalalala! Can't hear your nonsensical insinuations that women are anything less than perfect and have any gross biology at all!"

With their meal over, they allowed themselves to obey the siren call of their phones and check their messages for what their friends and family had posted before they departed. A last chance to swap stories the old-fashioned way before modern life made that impossible on their separate commutes. Naturally, every discussion was about the alien message yesterday and all the atomic missiles launching themselves. The strange thing was how little the government had to say on the matter so far. Neither on the state or the federal level were there any statements. Only at the local level were there tepid appeals for everyone to remain calm and to go about their business without fear of anything changing in the near term.

Jasmine was particularly concerned by the messages from their local diocese that they were reviewing the matter of alien contact and not to lose faith in their God. The panicked tone of the news items and messaging that she scrolled through of how the end of the world was imminent depressed her spirits lower and lower until she pushed her phone away. She was sure it wasn't that bad! What had really changed since yesterday? These aliens surely existed before their message, and nothing bad had happened! Why would it now? What did it matter if the government was at DEFCON 2, whatever that was? Wasn't it good that all those horrible weapons were gone?

Taking comfort in this logic, she still worried how she might help anyone along her commute that she still must undertake that morning. She'd received no notification that the work had been suspended from the center.

There was a very curious thread of secondary chatter and news articles on the strange disruption in communication that had started two nights before in Antarctica and the northernmost communities near the opposite pole.

"What do you think that's about?" Jasmine asked, eliciting nothing but a shake of her silent boyfriend's head.

"I don't know, but look at this video from Svalbard."

Turning his phone around, he replayed the video that had him so confused. A night scene showed from above the Arctic Circle. The twilight darkness made it hard to see definitively what was happening as the recorder ran towards another group of people surrounding something. But, when a four-legged creature a few meters long lifted its head on a long neck to the height of the camera and turned its wedge-shaped head to glance around it, it was clear enough strange tides were at hand. The creature's legs collapsed as it made a pained yowling sound and fell to the ground where it convulsed with tail and head thrashing across the thin snow cover. It wasn't clear in the jittery video what happened next, but it seemed to terrify the onlookers when they made more shouts and shrieks of alarm. Bizarrely, a pile of shredded clothes lay at its feet, including some that were caught on the wicked-looking claws of the creature and what looked like the remains of a bra hanging from one shoulder. The video ended focused on the pumping boots of the camerawoman when they ran from the lizard. Screams, roars, and a musical chirping resounded in the audio feed.

"I figured people that would want to live that far above the Arctic circle would be a little odd. Even if it would be the coolest thing ever to see a polar bear in the wild! But importing a Komodo Dragon and hanging clothes on it in the middle of the night seems like they might want to get a psychiatrist to help them adjust. Speaking for that poor animal, I say those people are just cruel. No wonder the helpless creature was so confused! Did you see it seize? The miserable lizard was probably freezing to death! I'm going to make sure that PETLA knows about this!"

Martin had spent plenty of time photographing monitor lizards as part of his time spent abroad from his home in Baja California and here in their Bellingham abode a few hours north of Seattle, Washington. That was no monitor lizard or even a distant cousin of one. Thinking about the intelligent look in that lizard's eyes and how those clothes didn't look to be draped upon the creature. That instead, the attire appeared as if they were once worn before becoming too small for it. Which was just impossible because that meant it would have had to have grown in the time it had been made to wear those garments. Small details that he had noticed while Jasmine focused on the welfare of the animal itself. As if he could ever expect anything else.

"...and then I'll clamp a leash on their necks and let the poor Komodo lead them around like a pet!"

"Jasmine..."

"On... Komodo Island!"

"Jasmine..."

"It will serve them right! That maltreated creature!"

"Mi vida... I have a bad feeling about today. With our dreams, what happened yesterday, and these lizards, maybe...maybe we should stay home today...Something tells me they're connected...."

"Oh, pshaw... both these events are nothing more than chances for us to improve ourselves with our dreams, our perseverance, and the respect that the natural world deserves from humanity. C'mon, you big party pooper! Today's another day to shine!"

"Jazz, I know that today is important for you to be with the girls for their ultrasound." Martin finally gave over after futilely trying to break through his dear's unwavering optimism. When they first met, her gorgeous looks had caught his eye, but it was that spirit that had captured his heart.

"The investigation that I was meant to assist today has already been cancelled. Could you please call the Center and tell them that you can't make it today? I don't think it's safe out there at all after that message and the nuke thing. I don't trust how people are going to react...."

"Oh boo, mahal. Did you see anyone rioting on our run this morning? I'm sure everyone will be perfectly reasonable! I know that I can help anyone that is feeling the blues. See? Look how many different prayer cards I have to hand out today! Everyone will see just how awesome this is! We have a chance to make friends with a whole new race of people that must be here to help us in some way. It would be silly for aliens to come all this way to start trouble when there are so many other worlds in the universe. Don't you feel better already?"

No, in point of fact, Martin didn't. But tried to put on a brave smile for the fearless woman he wanted to ask to marry him anyway. She, in turn, poked him playfully and gave him funny faces until the smile turned genuine and he relented. However reluctantly. Some people accused her of being Pollyannish when it came to real life. However, she was anything but. Instead, she was more hopeful than most that if she thought positively going into a situation, she could head off trouble before it raised its head. But, if adversity did occur, she was not one to pretend that the circumstances were one bit less severe than they were.

None of which helped Martin to make peace with the situation. Also, knowing that trying to tell her that going out into a world that just found out that the Universe wasn't quite so lonely was the best of ideas would make her even more adamant that everyone just needed a hug. "Can you at least join me in prayer? Please?" He asked, widening his eyes and tilting his head to look like a bashful puppy.

Jasmine laughed and gave him a quick peck on the mouth. Reminding him once again that he didn't have to plead to get her to join him in asking for protection from their shared faith in a higher power. Letting him clasp her hands with his as they bowed their heads together for Martin to lead in the prayer.

"And please...please, dear Lord... keep Jasmine from getting into a situation that she can't charm her way through. Amen."

"Amen." Jasmin finished, although not letting that last bit escape unnoticed. "As if there would ever be a time that being me isn't enough!"

"I wish I just could shake the feeling I have about today. Promise me you'll be careful. If you think that it's something that I wouldn't do, please don't."

"Napakaseryoso mo!"

"I love you, Jasmine." He said, ignoring her comment. Serious was what he was whenever he felt her safety was at stake. He didn't share her belief that the world could be tamed with an upbeat attitude and a refusal to ever back down.

"I love you, Martin, but you'll see that everything will just be fine today, I promise."

Kissing, they departed on their separate ways to their jobs. Martin would have normally gone to the harbor where the NOAA had an office to participate in photographing and helping document unexplained changes in the daily habits of the resident Orca pods near the San Juan Islands. Which for the past month had broken from their usual hunting grounds at this time of year to circle an area south of Lopez Island. Significantly disrupting maritime traffic through the area. Even more bizarrely, all three pods had joined together in this odd behavior and begun to hunt seals in behavior more typically seen from the transient pods while remaining in an inexplicable fixed area. However, all local government offices had been closed after yesterday as the world waited with bated breath to see what would happen next. The federal government turning from oceanic surveys to move the gargantuan bureaucratic machinery towards the possibility of having to confront chaos as the intentions of the aliens are revealed.

Jasmine was a marine biologist on a long-term work assignment to, with considerable pride, the Northwest Cetacean Studies institute. Today was a critical one for her as the "girls," two bottlenose dolphins named Trixie and Kala being evaluated for release into the wild, were due to have ultrasounds today of the calves growing in their bellies. They, to Jasmine's delight, responded particularly well to her presence in their tank whenever the woman was there to help calm them. Attracted to the general good nature and bottomless energy of the Filipina.

Aware as she was that people didn't always respond to Earth-shaking events like contact with aliens through their electronic devices in the best of ways, she remained on her guard. Jasmine's current home of Bellingham wasn't the largest of cities, with a population only a fraction of the megalopolises further south. But it was big enough for her to get a taste of how people were reacting firsthand.

While on their run earlier, the streets had been mercifully vacant, whereas now there were hordes of people descending upon grocery stores and gas stations. Hoarding resources as quickly and as ruthlessly as they could, Jasmine saw with an uncharacteristic frown turning her lips down. Jasmine saw many people traveling in groups that eyed each other suspiciously. Many of these groups were racially uniform. Most of them were armed. All of them gave her the heebie-jeebies. Large crowds were milling around outside of the banks while they awaited their openings. They were trying to cash out their accounts before the markets folded, she was told by one particularly irate-looking man. Asking him if he knew that withdrawing money from the banks was one of the things that made the Great Depression worse made earned her a dismissive shrug. Jasmine handed him a prayer card and went on her way from the muttering crowd. The federal government insured their money. What was there to worry about?

Walking past a house on her way to the rail station, there was an enormously loud warbling as if someone had kicked over a cage full of parakeets inside. Another burst of musical whistling came, making her jump in startlement from a different part of the house as a woman ran from the building past Jasmine with tears running from her terrified eyes. Ignoring Jasmine's calls for her to stop as she fled out of sight. Leaving the stunned woman to look at the curtains drawn over the windows. There was a heavy pattern of thumping in the house as if something far heavier than a human's booted feet were stomping back and forth, and a terrific crash that was followed by more fluting birdsong from two different sources.

Knocking on the door, Jasmine asked brightly if there was anything she could do to help. Her only answer was the skin-crawling sensation of watchful silence. Something was in there, listening, waiting to see if she would go away. When she heard the heavy rasping snuffles of a pair of lungs much larger than a human's, she was on her way before her mind caught up with the movements of her feet. Part of her, quicker than the rest, knew the proper response to having the unwanted attention of a large and unseen creature. She didn't want to think about the movement she'd seen behind one window curtain. Nor the way that a monstrous shadow filled the entirety of the large window or the circle of pale yellow that had resembled a single baleful eye peering out to watch Jasmine's swift departure.

When she was a block away and heard the sound of tearing metal, breaking glass, and cracking wood, she dared not look back to see just what was forcing its way out of that home.

Sporadically, she heard strings of popping sounds from further downtown towards the waterfront. She also heard many sirens and the meaningless echoing of amplified words of command in the same direction. Nervously, she told herself they must be fireworks celebrating the announcement that we weren't alone but didn't really believe that was what she heard at all. Perhaps it would have been better if Martin had come with her, she thought. Before her innate stubbornness took over and she marched ahead to the station that was already in sight.

Not even the rude woman on the train was enough to dampen her mood when she was incorrectly identified as Chinese. The ugly and conspiratorial epithets that she was somehow behind what was happening no match for the simple kindness of a bright smile and pleasant but assertive greeting that Jasmine had learned were more than enough to disarm ninety percent of such interactions. A can of mace was ready in her pack. Unfortunately, a deterrent that she had had to replace once before after using it when neither her brightly upbeat cheerfulness nor the restraint of others had been enough in the ten percent of interactions that had headed towards violence because of her heritage.

She had prayed that night for that man and hoped that while he healed from the chemical burns she had been forced to introduce to his eyes, he also healed from what had made him so hateful. She was very optimistic that he would see the light as soon as he could see again. If not, well, then he just had no business clouding up her day! Araw-araw ay isang araw upang lumiwanag. Ang buhay ay masyadong maikli para sa galit kapag ang lahat ay maaaring maging kahanga-hanga. She told herself.

Sitting facing east for a gorgeous look at Mt. Baker on the train, she spotted the shape of dozens of eagles or geese flying out towards the wilderness. At least that's what she thought they were. They were very high up, almost too high for her to be sure, but the unsettling impression that she might never have seen that silhouette shape sat vaguely in her thoughts before she dismissed it. She'd never in all her life seen, or even heard of, birds with tails or necks that long before. Maybe they were giant kites that had gotten away? What else could they possibly be?

Her idea that they may have been human constructs of some kind was blown apart by the drunken wobbling flight of the birds and the uncertain tempo of their wing beats. As if they weren't sure how to navigate the element that should have been their home. One even lost so much control that its wings folded, causing it to briefly plummet, before finding its bearings again. Another bird in the ragged swarm of dozens slipped beneath the one that had just fallen, and the two forms joined as if one was carrying the other. Birds don't do that, do they?

As her journey took her south, the big I-5 highway came into view along with the ongoing logjam of the morning commute. Or maybe it was more than the usual? Why were so many going north instead of south on a weekday?

The ride dragged on as the Amtrak service worked its way towards Seattle, and she was cut off from the sight of any other unexpected sights. Slipping into her thoughts about how blessed she had been in her life so far. She'd been born in the Philippines to an American father and Filipina mother who had met when he had gone sightseeing on leave from his station on the island chain. Getting her Bachelor's in Biology at the De La Salle University and her master's at the University of Washington. Where she had met Martin as he worked on his own Bachelor's. At school, she had found him attractive. At church, she found him arresting. When they had met again at a volunteer event in Puget Sound cleaning up trash along the shore, she knew he was the one that she would love forever.

He had started life in Baja California, where his parents worked as managers in a local resort hotel. Scraping together enough money to send him to school in America. Martin had always been a child of the ocean, much as she had, and grew to be very knowledgeable about the local waters. Even becoming impressive enough in his knowledge to become a guide for the hotel and his parents in leading guests curious about what sea and bird-life were in the region. They too had found a favorable scholarship and grant system at the University of Washington in Seattle to boost their own money in helping to defray tuition and living expenses. Not that Martin hadn't had to find work of his own in the tried-and-true manner of many another college student at a local restaurant as a server.

At twenty-five and twenty-six, she thought they were settled happily into their lives and no longer quite so imperiled by the uncertainties of their first post-college years. Even though their families lived too far to provide the immediate comfort of proximity, they each had strong social and professional circles to depend on. Their finances were sufficient to suit their lifestyles, and they were able to live comfortably and stress-free. She had crunched the numbers without letting Martin on and knew that they could afford a bigger apartment or even a house further away from the city if it became practical to have such accommodation. The commute would be longer, sure, but she thought it was time for them to marry and start a family.

Maybe I'll give him a few months to make a move, she contemporized. Then I'll pop the question myself if he is not going to! Won't that surprise him! Jasmine covered her mouth with her hand as she giggled at the thought of imagining the look on her lover's face if she was to get down on one knee and propose like they do in the movies. No one on the train looked up from their phones or returned from their blank stares to acknowledge the happy smile she radiated, hoping to share a little of her mirth and make the travel more personable. Receding back into her thoughts after she attempted to make her bright mood infectious, she knew soon as she'd made that decision that it was the right one. Time and tide waited for no woman after all, and she would not be deterred by any kind of recent chaos. She knew that they and their families would be happier if the love that Jasmine and Martin knew had already been privately consecrated in the eyes of God was also blessed by the Church after the rite of marriage. A hand reached up to rub the cross laying on her chest as thoughts of joy and belonging warmed her heart.

After switching from Amtrak to the bus, she got off at the stop closest to the Aquarium. Humming to herself as she strolled along with her head held high and awash with equally high expectations that everything with Trixie and Kala would go just swimmingly today. Stopping along the way to deploy a plastic bag that she had picked up from the floor of the bus to pick up trash that her path crossed. Hoping that others would follow her example and make the world a little cleaner than it was the day before.

A plucky aspiration that crumbled when a woman, throwing her plastic water bottle into a bush right in front of Jasmine, refused to acknowledge her calls that the litterbug had dropped the bottle Jasmine waved in the air over her head. A gloomy look passed over a face that was not very accustomed to them, along with a sigh of frustration and slumping shoulders while she stuffed the bottle into the reused bag in her other hand. Seconds later, she threw those shoulders back and straightened her spine with a jaunty swing of her hips to an upbeat song humming in her throat. Jasmine's implacable smile returning as she strutted onward to find respite in a warm reception at the center if she could not find a more caring one in the world outside it.

"Good morning George!" She shouted exuberantly to the guard at the front gate of the still closed facility. Public tours not beginning until the afternoon on that Friday because of the medical exams.

"Girasol!" The elderly Hispanic guard exclaimed from where he watched the Seattle skyline worryingly as Jasmine sauntered through the entrance. She moved towards a line of bins to sort her morning's haul of litter as they exchanged greetings.

"How is my favorite biologist this beautiful morning? Did you have problems getting in today, Mi querida? Strange things are happening in the city! People are going crazy this morning for assistance, causing a lot of chatter on the police band on my radio. Muy extraño! Are you okay? It must have been dangerous to come in this morning!"

"Nothing weird at all today, George! Everyone seemed to be ready for another great day if you ask me." She said in reply. Trying to gloss over the strange events that she'd encountered to ease George's worry. The sound of overwhelmed cries for help from the security guard's link to emergency services made the stalwart optimism of the woman slip briefly as she reviewed what else she'd seen that morning. A man, wearing a business suit, massaging his strangely swollen feet that appeared to be far too big for the shoes he had just removed while seated on the train. Points across the toe of his sock tore, showing out-of-control nail growth that made her feel sorry for the otherwise well-groomed man. Perhaps he had a genetic condition that caused him pain to cut his nails?

A woman, her body hidden beneath oversized layers of unseasonable clothing, hunched over to hug herself while taking in voluminous rasping breaths. A sound, she now recalled with a shiver, that reminded her of what she'd heard at the house on her way to the train station. When the woman on the bus had raised her head to look at Jasmine, she didn't know if she had seen the glow of an orange iris around a cat-like slit pupil through the thick sunglasses. What she had seen, were what were surely rivulets of mascara running from beneath the rim of the sunglasses across the woman's face. Jasmine did not even have a tissue to offer her or a way to discreetly let her know the problem. She was sure she'd be mortified to learn the ruins that her makeup was in! Or perhaps it was a new style that she was unaware of?

Another woman, strangely towering in ill-fitting clothes that strained against her girth, ducking out of sight behind a row of bushes to rub against a tree as if to scratch an intolerable itch along her side. A scarf wrapped firmly around her neck and, ignorant of the way her clothing tore quickly against the tree as if under great stress. Had that been a patch of black skin radiating out from beneath her exposed bra or just a shadow?

To be fair, in what might seem a blithe dismissal of what she'd seen, could anyone honestly say that they would have jumped to the correct conclusion of what was about to happen without the benefit of foreknowledge? Would they have just taken the oddities in stride as so many others?

Jasmine shrugged, casting the strange sights of a day in Seattle aside. Maybe next time, I will carry my small first aid kit to offer some help! She thought, trying to find some way to help strangers if these inexplicable injuries and the pain they were so obviously causing were to continue. She was fully trained and ready to volunteer!

Assuaging George's fears with her upbeat reassurances, Jasmine carried onward with a spring in her step. If it was even possible, the indefatigable Filipina's emotional batteries charged to a yet more awe-inspiring level with the daily greeting that she encouraged by being as outgoing as she could. Even taking in stride Rebecca's typical taciturn grunt of acknowledgement in the locker room as she lay on the bench with pitch-black sunglasses covering her eyes. An encouraging sign that the customarily hung-over woman was finally coming around after working with her for the past month. Jasmine was sure of it!

Of course, her most anticipated greeting of all was to come once she had slipped out of her jeans and tank top to don her wetsuit for her meeting with the two most charming flippered girls in the world.

Dr. Schofield, the rehabilitation center director, was a man in his late fifties who showed the years he had spent chasing whales across the oceans in the weathered appearance that didn't mesh well with the business suit he wore. The suit's tie and jacket haphazardly thrown on the seatback of the folding chair he sat in just outside of the splash zone of the main pen when Jasmine emerged. Now bound to a life that plainly didn't agree with him as he tirelessly sought funding and supplies for their operation. He gave a distracted wave and a half-hearted rote warning to her not to become attached to the dolphins as he poured over documents spread across a table before him without looking up. Jasmine felt a pang of sympathy at the look that she had caught on his face far too often. That distant, dreamy expression whenever he turned his eyes to the waters of the sound and the promise of the open Pacific beyond the horizon. She knew that look. She knew that look very well.

Returning his wave with a cheery greeting and happy that she had a safety backup present so that she could get in the water, she splashed down onto the examination platform a meter below the surface. Immediately grabbing the attention of Trixie and Kala, who exploded into a cacophony of chittering clicks and squeals that ran right into the ultrasonic. Jasmine laughed at the buzzy feeling of their echolocation vibrating against her skin through the wetsuit. The two females rushing to her without invitation, each pushing their favorite toy that they used to keep themselves amused with their rostrums until they bumped into Jasmine's chest.

Jasmine laughed and clapped her hands with joy before wrapping her arms around one, and then the other, of her cetacean friends. Any thoughts on how they would one day be re-released into the wild after their stranding pushed into the future so that she could savor the moment. Found in Vancouver, the veterinary team in Canada thought they had been caught in the errant blast of a survey ship's sonar. Deafening and disorienting them until they ended up on an island of the strait where they had then been handed over to the American's facility after a titanic bureaucratic headache that involved both country's state departments and the UN. In the end, the fact that there was room for them to receive medical treatment in Washington, and not British Columbia, settled things for politicians in both countries that had more nationalistic pride than common sense.

The young woman continued to splash around with her friends and give the swollen girths of their bodies gentle but firm rubs to approximate the body contact they had with each other. Being careful not to do anything that might habituate them to expecting rewards from human hands, which could very well lead to disaster once they'd been released.

Hearing the chattering echolocation of their pod mates, another pair of older females from the same stranding spy-hopped in a pen off to the side. Wary of what was being done to the pregnant cows, they had to be kept separated as their protectiveness of the two expecting mothers had become more aggressive lately. The darker-hued and larger of the two older females had a scattering of spots across her rostrum and been named Umbra. While the other with a long since healed notch in her tail fluke had been dubbed, originally enough, Nikki as a wordplay on the distinguishing nick in her fin. Of the four, Jasmine had the most strained relationship with that one.

Oldest by far, they had estimated Nikki as being at least forty years of age. A true matriarch and a true loss for whatever pod she had led. She made it known that she detested being away from the pregnant females for their upcoming examination by ramming the gate blocking her entry while emitting strident bursts of creaks and clicks. If it hadn't been for the tall fence between the two tanks, there was little doubt that she would have immediately jumped into the main holding pool the minute that subterfuge had been used to separate the two pairs of females. Stirred up by her agitation, Umbra raced in circles in their pen with a nearly constant stream of buzzes and popping sounds radiating from her melon. The only time they calmed was when Trixie or Kala diffidently pushed their toys over to the gate and hovered there as they were ultrasonically probed by their elders.

Four more joined Jasmine and Dr. Schofield at the side of the pool as the six of them double-checked the medical instruments and supplies. Reviewing the plan for the conduct of the dual examinations.

The newcomers were Jacob Huxley, a tall skinny behavioral psychologist in his early thirties with blond hair and dark, languid eyes. Hailing from British Columbia, Canada, he had come to document the changes in behavior noticed in marine mammals around the world for the past year and was a relative unknown to the others at the center.

Yoo Ho-Sook, a short and slim self-possessed South Korean woman of middling years with dark eyes and long black hair that made Jasmine vaguely jealous to see it bound in an elaborate series of braids down her back. She rarely talked, although she was always quick to respond with a smile of her when faced with Jasmine's exuberance. She was the center's lead veterinarian, and they were lucky to have her given how keen other facilities around the world were to engage her services.

Ho-Sook's partner was Samantha Heard, a native of Nebraska from the United States who was quick to tell you that they knew as much about dolphins as dolphins knew about corn where she had grown up. A big woman with an easy smile on her face and an even easier bedside manner who boomed laughter from her deep chest and slapped Dr. Schofield on his back. Nearly knocking him into the water. The two women were both wildlife veterinarians and would be conducting most of the hands-on sample collections or necessary medicating.

The final member of the group was another man scarcely much bigger than the diminutive Ho-Sook. Another islander like Jasmine, Hidalgo Reyes, was from the Philippines, and they exchanged greetings in their native tongue. Even though she had grown up on the western isles of the archipelago, and he from the Southern Luzon region to the east, they had been quick to fall to reminiscing about what shared experiences they had from the sprawling island chain. He was the trainer working with the dolphins, in the least corrupting way possible, to inure them to the processes of testing and collection that they experienced during their recovery. It was far better than repeatedly subjecting them to sedatives while they were pregnant.

"Rebecca!" Samantha thundered back down the tunnel to the warren of tunnels that served the facility. "Get out here with your cameras, you drunken waif! You're too young to be drinking like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders!"

", Please...please..." Rebecca begged, dragging a wheeled tough box behind her with one hand and trying to keep her brains from spilling out of her head with the other. Looking decidedly green around the gills and sweating out alcohol badly in the wetsuit she now wore. Revealing a figure previously shrouded by oversized sweatpants and a top that could cause whiplash wherever she went in anything more revealing of her curves than a potato sack. A fact that might have been at least partially responsible for her hard-drinking ways as she couldn't stand men, or people in general, treating her as nothing more than a pretty thing to be displayed. Certainly, it was all she thought anyone cared for about her at all. How full her lips were or the volume of her mammary tissue and not the two master's degrees she had earned or her accomplished tennis career. "Can we save this speech for another time, mom? I'm seeing auras right now...."

"A hollow piece of grass like you doesn't even know the first thing about drinking anyways. Ol' Sam will take you out someday and learn ya' a thing or two. That she will! Of all the things in the world, this slip of a girl moans because men talk to her breasts and not her face. Like yer the first woman to ever have that problem!"

Hidalgo and Jacob coughed and looked with discomfort and looked away from Rebecca and all the other women present. Causing Samantha to bellow knowing laughter and start throwing elbows around, significantly increasing the unease in all the men and women paying her attention at all the unwanted truth she was dispensing.

"Alright, my pretty little Filipina fish. In ya' get to calm the mackerel down. We ain't getting any younger, and it would be nice to make sure these two are ready to go on their way before the world falls apart." Samantha waved her meaty arm towards the tank and the two dolphins there peeping their eyes above the rim, sharing a broad grin with her much younger, much smaller friend. The tireless optimism of Jasmine and the grittily indefatigable Cornhusker had become old friends at first sight with their meeting when the young Pacific Islander had been loaned to the Institute for the year by the University. Much to the comical dismay of everyone else who couldn't keep up with their energetic personalities.

Jumping in, everything started so calmly before swiftly descending straight into chaos.

Later, the watching crew would argue among themselves about the most minor clues they felt that day. That perhaps if they had just paid attention to the unsettled feelings in their stomachs or the aberrant behaviors of the dolphins, what was about to happen could have been avoided. But as it was, none knew what to make of the dolphins circling Jasmine and then turning towards the southeast. Bobbing in place in the same orientation that the suddenly silent elders in the other tank had adopted. Jasmine, swimming below the surface with mask and snorkel on as part of the rhythm she'd developed to calm the cetaceans, was startled when Trixie's dorsal fin suddenly disappeared from beneath her hand when she suddenly reoriented. Bubbles flew from her mouth as she felt an extreme sense of vertigo and a lurch. As if her abdomen had tried to leap from her body.

Watching from above, the six members of the center broke into wild calls of alarm as Jasmine and her two dolphin friends disappeared in an instant. Breaking from their brief stupor, the incredible noise unleashed by Nikki and Umbra in their own panic at the sudden absence of their pod mates masked the sound of tens of thousands of liters pouring into the sudden void. A void where a mass of water had just disappeared along with its occupants.

Dr. Schofield, whose first name was Benjamin or Benny and wished that he didn't feel pressured to have everyone call him by his title, sprung up from his makeshift desk at the sudden commotion.

"Gone? What do you mean they're gone?" Rushing forward, he didn't even pay attention to knocking his chair over into a puddle that soaked his suit jacket all the way through with briny seawater. Looking into the tank, he confirmed that there were zero dolphins and zero Jasmines where there should have been two and one, respectively.

"Alright, har har. I hope everyone had a good laugh at making the director piss his pants. How much did all the mirrors you had to buy to make your magic trick work cost us? Can you return them for a full refund? Please?"

Only Rebecca and Hidalgo seemed to have heard him, and the director's confusion only increased at seeing their gaping mouths and the glossy look in their eyes. He couldn't ever recall these two being particularly predisposed to being actors or actresses. The rest were preoccupied doubting what they themselves had seen. Going with what they knew to do. Assessing the evidence in front of them.

"We saw the water disappear."

"Look at the tank levels!"

"Watch it! Umbra just bent the gate!"

"Sam, prepare the butorphanol. I've got the injectors."

"What's their body weights?"

"We saw the water backfill. It's like a giant scoop was taken right out of the middle.

"Jacob in the water with me. We need to make sure that they're not still in there hidden by optics. This can't be real!" Benjamin ordered the psychologist while kicking off his shoes. Stripped down to his pants, he slapped on a pair of goggles before diving into the tank without seeing if he was followed.

Benny and Jacob circled the bottom of the tank, feeling with their hands to verify what their eyes were telling them. Jasmine and two adult bottlenose dolphins had vanished into thin air right in front of six other people.

Emerging dripping wet from the tank, the director pulled Jacob out and belatedly issued an order that he kicked himself for not considering earlier.

"No one goes in that tank until we know what's going on. Until we know exactly where Jasmine is."

"And the dolphins..." someone said under their breath.

"I understand, believe me, I do, but right now, the priority is Jasmine. Has anyone called 911 yet? Call the CIA, call Mulder and Scully, call everyone! Find out where our friend went!"

Rebecca was the first to realize that the scope of the problem was far more expansive than they'd realized so far when calling emergency services. The phone rang and rang without an answer.

"Do you think this has something to do with the lizards in Alaska this morning?"

"Alaska? Do you mean the flying creature spotted in Russia?"

"The disappearing people in Canada?

"What about what happened in Antarctica and New Zealand?"

"New Zealand too? What happened! I have family in...."

"What about The Message? Could aliens have..."

"Stop! Stop! Listen!" Everybody stopped shouting over each other as a growing awareness of the oddities spread. The whole staff trying to probe what they had heard over the past two days for clues as to the fate of Jasmine and their patients.

Helicopters, military, and civilian flew overhead towards Seattle as sirens wailed throughout the downtown area. Bursts of gunfire echoed off glass skyscrapers, and wordless roars of fear came from every direction. An explosion shattered windows, and the reflection of a brief ball of flame rising from an unseen collision drove terror into the minds of the witnesses at the aquatic center.

"What... what? What is wrong with Nikki and Umbra!"

Jostled, they focused on something much closer to home. Something that they could try to make sense of. Something that they could act upon and forget the unknown danger spreading beyond their sight. Rebecca kept trying different emergency contacts as the rest rushed to make sure that no more lives had just grown imperiled.

The two mature dolphins were floating listlessly at the top of the tank. Bumping against each other without any movement beyond the periodic spray erupting from their spiracles. The only ready indication that they seemed to be alive.

"Did you inject them?" Benny demanded of Samantha. She looked down at the two auto-injectors that she'd never even gotten a chance to attach to their poles as an answer. Both still full of the clear serum meant for the unresponsive females.

"What is happening!" Hidalgo yelled. The first one to crack as the sequence of events grew to be too much for him.

Snatching a swimming flipper from a basket of gear, Benny beat the surface of the water to grab the attention of the two dolphins. Trying to elicit some response with what would be a thunderous noise to the two of them and getting nothing.

"No one gets in that water. Try to bring them to the edge so that we can get some vitals on them. Do you all understand? No one in the water!"

"I'm going to get George's radio. I'm not getting anywhere with my cell phone." Rebecca said, having given up getting someone to answer. Running down the service corridor to the outside world and the front gate. Her piercing scream echoing back as untold horrors befell her just out of sight of the others. Shrinking against each other as if feeling that the world was ending around them. Little knowing that, in some ways, the world was indeed ending.

After the mysterious and still unexplained message they had all gotten yesterday and the even more ominous sign of the Nation's entire inventory of ICBMs disappearing into the sky on roaring towers of smoke and flame, they had thought that nothing new could go wrong when they'd awoken that morning.

The sound of shuffling feet and shoes came from the blackness of the corridor long before their owners stumbled into the light. Rebecca, whatever might have remained of her drunken ennui from earlier blasted apart by the sequence of events, was supporting George with his arm thrown around her taller shoulders. Muscles trained by thousands of hours of tennis and a grueling workout regime to counter her hard-drinking habits served her well to support the panting and sweating guardsman.

Chanting a prayer over and over in Spanish, the others could get nothing from him to explain his distress and the scream they'd heard from the statuesque woman stumbling towards them.

Easing him down, the hand curled across his body and trapped between them was revealed. But it wasn't a hand anymore. It was a five-fingered animal's paw with curved talons replacing fingertips, blackened skin that grew coarser and thicker by the second, while the whole appendage swelled in size. His whole arm shook uncontrollably, and the man looked on the verge of fainting as he stared with fixed eyes on the part of him that was no longer human. A tremor ran up his arm, and there was a crack, and something in his wrist shattered as he howled in pain. The band of his wristwatch bursting as the joint between hand and arm grew in girth and strength. The palm of his hand and his fingers both lengthening.

The gathered group watched this transformation play out before their eyes. Science Fiction and horror had been made real right in front of them. They were frozen in their mute disbelief.

Rebecca turned her head aside, lunging for a bucket, and swept her long braid of hair out of the way with one hand before emptying her stomach in the pail. Picking up her head, she swiped at her mouth with her wetsuit sleeve and looked at the others with haunted eyes. Laying the awful truth before the others as it all started to make sense.

"Those lizards we saw on the news weren't animals... They were people! All those people we saw looking weird and behaving crazy in the city. They're not sick! They're turning into lizards!"

"Rebecca... get away from him." Samantha quickly advised. We don't know if this...."

She scoffed, spurning their caution and reaching for trauma shears to cut the sleeve of George's uniform up to the elbow instead.

"Please. There is nothing like this on Earth. Never. Whatever this is, it is not being caused by contagion. If it was, you saw how widespread it is, we'd be infected already. Now can someone please help me hold him down, or are you just going to stand there and stare at him? Will the tranquilizers work on him?"

Samantha helped up one and looked at it, looked at the placid Umbra and Nikki, and then Dr. Schofield.

"No, the uptake is too low. Ho, take my key." He took a ring of keys out of his jacket pocket and selected one. "Get the fentanyl. You know the dosages don't you?" Nodding her head, she ran down the dark corridor. An unseen door in the dimly lit passage slammed shut, and she was gone.

"When you get a moment, check each other for signs of this... atypical degeneration. We need to band together if we're going to weather this. Let me have George's radio, Rebecca."

Rebecca worked on calming George, who was quite beyond being calmed as small plates of hardened chitinous material grew from his black thickening skin starting around the base of his new claws. Groaning tendons shifted in his shoulder, and his arm snapped to his side in a major realignment. Severely limiting his range of motion and forcing the limb to be held tucked against itself with the palm of his hand facing outwards--a perfect position for something like the four-legged lizards that everyone had seen on the internet.

With a twang, like the snapping of a bowstring, his other arm reoriented to mirror the first as his carotid artery stood bulging from the locked tension of his muscles. Black tendrils rose from his first altered limb, spreading up his neck and across the span of his collar bone. With his teeth clenched so tightly, he couldn't get words past them even as his thoughts raced in an endless cycle between prayers for himself and his family. With the last of the mobility of his remaining hand as it spasmed in painful jerks, he reached into the pocket of the guard uniform with two swelling fingers to hold a picture of his family between the digits. Claws growing right from the bones of his fingers to tear his nails off in brief spurts of blood that splashed across Rebecca's chest.

The transformation seemed to be speeding up, and the woman could do nothing more than hold onto the shoulders of his body as it grew and grew. Spreading outward centimeter by centimeter and barreling into a new form as his shoulders widened and his rib cage flared. Stretching his taut flesh like a drum until more seemed to knit itself into creation with startling speed to keep up with the enormous changes in the structure of the man's body. His swelling mass ripping his clothing apart at the seams after Rebecca had undone the belt that had been agonizingly restricting his growth. She had begun kneeling on each side of his upper body, controlling his thrashing movements with her knees and her hands on his shoulders. But now, she found herself a meter off the ground and kneeling only on the chest of George as he grew far larger than any human could possibly be.

All she could do, with George's limbs each now thicker than her shoulders or hips were at their widest and with far more muscle rippling in nauseating waves that made his skin writhe, was place her hands on each side of his enlarging head and maintain contact with him. Repeating the prayer back to him in fluent Spanish, just one of the four languages she knew, in an effort to keep his rolling eyes on hers and block the pain and horror threatening to wash away his identity. Crawling across his body to reach for his flailing arm and paw at the end of it, she snatched the picture of his family to hold it before his broadening face.

The others stumbled back in fright before swallowing their fear of what was happening to George to focus on the other problems that suddenly seemed less dire as a new kind of creature was remade from the man that they all considered part of their work family. It was not that they were ignoring the transformation, it was that they had two other crises to manage as well and could not just simply stand there staring at what happened to mild-mannered family man.

A splash from the pool made Jacob and Hidalgo squeak like little girls, a fact that would have made the distracted Samantha roar with laughter if everything wasn't so intent on falling into the twilight zone at the moment, as the no longer comatose female dolphins that still remained slid up onto the examination ledge and stilled. Watching the fantastical events going on with eerily intent eyes. Samantha, finding something to do, at last, ran to them to check their breathing and heart rates.

Benny was yelling into the radio, trying to explain to a dispatcher that not only had a woman and two two-hundred-and-eighty-kilogram dolphins vanished, but there was also a man here turning into a monster. He could do nothing but stare at the radio non-plussed when he was told the response time to his location would be between two and three hours. And that was on the priority list for having both a disappearance and a transformation at the same site.

"And forget about the fish." The dispatcher finished spitefully. "We'll look for them at Burger Queen in their fishwich if we all live through the next few days."

Benny fought a brief and nearly irresistible urge to throw the radio into the 15-meter pool so that he could be rid of ever hearing that ignorant voice again. Fish? Really?

Finished with calling for help that wouldn't come, he and his crew now knew that whatever medical assistance they could provide George would be it. A realization that settled in just as his body surged past the confines of his hips. A whipping tail formed that was no more than a black scale-covered nub of vertebrae at first before it thickened with muscle and sinew until it was the same diameter as his trunk. Ripping his pants and underwear asunder to reveal that he was assuredly no longer a mammal and that his legs, although much larger, were not suited for the locomotion hinted at by his arms.

The perfect storm of chaos and uncertainty finally hit its peak as Nikki and Umbra shimmied back into the water of their auxiliary tank to watch with a calm expectant air that would never have been hinted at by their earlier actions. Even George quieted with a little help from an injection of a synthetic opioid, and an expectant hush fell over everyone as the hair on their arms and scalps rose with latent energy.

A loud pop of displaced air occurred just above the main tank that sent Nikki and Umbra into paroxysms of new joy at the return of the none the worse for wear Trixie and Kala.

"Where is Jasmine? Where the hell is Jasmine!"

"Where did that third dolphin come from? And what is wrong with it?"

"I need to get to my office and make some phone calls. I'm sorry, George," Ben said not unkindly as the man's now royal purple irises with vertical oval pupils squeezed shut in denial. Feeling for the first time that his spine had now elongated into a new limb longer than his entire body at seven meters long. And that man continued to grow with no end in sight.

"I need someone to help me. Hidalgo, thank you for volunteering." His move back to where his office lay in the catacombs of service corridors was checked by the frightened gasp of Ho-Sook backing into him at the sight of something in the direction he needed to go. Her hand grabbed for his arm and then slid into his hand, seeking comfort as he turned to see something he rather wished he hadn't.

The main passageway of which all the other corridors branched was a solid concrete rectangle with pipes running the length of the ceiling alongside fluorescent lights. Lights that were currently blocked by the creature completely filling the four-meter wide, three-meter tall passage. A great paw, larger than the torso of even giant Samantha, stepped forward into the light of the day. Claws gently flexing against the cement of the floor before the lowered head shot forward and rose to a height three meters above the lip of the hole it had just emerged from.

Walking out with a confident stride, the creature straightened its legs to reveal that it was far larger than they'd first thought. Crowding the group against George's straining form and the pool. They now saw what it was George was becoming as the guard wheezed and groaned as his whole body stretched in waves. With each clench of his sharpening teeth, another vertebra expanded to increase his torso, tail, or neck length. With a mewling cry that came from the base of the whipping neck that Rebecca now straddled clutching at bristling scales, the spinal sections would split into two new segments that locked together like a ball and socket for strength. The final shape George would have was displayed by the golden-eyed creature who'd appeared when wings tucked firmly against its sides shook and then spread, girding more than half of the central bowl of the facility, before folding neatly once more.

"A dragon," Jacob said, hiccupping hysterically as the psychologist joined Hidalgo in breaking from the stress. "A dragon. Right in front of us. George is...."

"I extend my utmost apologies for startling you with my arrival and for blocking the escape route that Dr. Yuu Ho-Sook and Jacob Huxley would have sought to embark through. I respectfully urge you not to take any alarm in my appearance nor the conversation that I must have with you. George Hernandez has been chosen to become a Child of the Egg and will be among the other subjects that I will humbly and with the utmost gravity attempt to address your many perfectly understandable questions and objections on. I assure you that I recognize how traumatic his transition into a new form of life has, is, and will continue to be for him, his family, and yourselves while also recognizing the difficulty of my task in expressing to you that he and others must suffer this fate if humanity is to continue to exist.

"Mr. Hernandez, I apologize for the unceremonious loss of your humanity and for the pain that you were suffering. Many events are in motion at the moment, and energy allowances are at a premium. I am very sorry to have to inform you. But you shall suffer no more physical pain."

George, looking very much like he wasn't in the state of mind to care about 'energy allowances,' asked in fear if this was happening to his family. Speaking in grunts and whistles that the others took as sounds of pain but were a whole new instinctive form of communication. The eyes of the golden-eyed alien softened, and George's head whipped while he howled in agony that transcended the physical when he was told the truth. His whole family were becoming Children of the Egg just as he was at that very moment. George screamed in his native language.

"¡Mi familia! ¡Oh Dios! ¡Por favor Dios! ¡Por favor no! ¡No mi familia! ¡No mi familia!"

The fantasy spoke in a polite but gravely basso that made the human's skin rise with goosebumps as George roared, begging for his family. As if the deep tenor of the dragon's voice touched a primal chord that none even knew they had. Pulling at a part of their unconscious psyches that remembered how dark and full of danger the night was long before humanity had beaten it back with the tenuous mastery of the fire gifted them by the stroke of a lightning bolt. What had this creature done to George's family?

The dragon was a more civil enigma than anyone could have ever thought possible. At its full size, it was easy to see how badly stuffed into the tunnel it must have been. Standing near eight meters tall and twenty-five meters long and with a wingspan of nearly thirty meters, it occupied far more of the concrete pad than everyone else combined. Even with George nearing a third of its size and flailing over onto his belly, sending everyone running straight into the newcomer's embrace to avoid his uncontrollable spasms as bony phalanges grew sickeningly through layers of muscle and skin until the wounds sealed over.

Wings, George thought dimly through the haze that the world had darkened into. I am growing wings. If I move my fingers like this, the feeble hand-like structures jerked, and the three longest fingers curled to flex the leather sails already beginning to bind them together, it will make me go higher. How did I know that? Did Jose, my son, tell me that? Who... who is Jose? Whimpering in confusion, he tried to attract the attention of the strange creature climbing up his neck from his shoulder with a little square that showed more things like her. George looked at it and remembered. That is my family, and this is what I must be to protect them. None but Rebecca could even guess the turmoil he was undergoing. But she was able to see the way that his eyes, growing distant until she had waved his family's picture at him once again, brightened and his pupils irised nearly closed to focus on the image of his loved ones. Never leaving it again until his transformation was complete.

Despite the enormity of the creature addressing them, the scientists were already scanning the features of its anatomy, and Benny had noticed right away that when speaking, neither the dragon's jaws nor tongue had moved. Instead, the length of its neck had shivered and twitched as if that was where the sound of speech had been the modulation in conjunction with some passage at the base of the throat where its voice seemed to originate. Which, it turned out, it had.

"And you can cease your search for Jasmine Irving, for that is she in the body of water two point five meters behind you. Greet your friends, if you please, Jasmine Irving."

"Oh my god." Samantha gasped, covering her mouth with both hands as Trixie and Kala butted the unknown dolphin onto the examination deck with their heads where it (she, they noticed seeing her underbelly) wallowed on her side as if confused by her body. Unnaturally, the dolphin was completely silent as if that skill, which was so central to aquatic life, was beyond her use. Wrapped around the pectoral flipper rising into the air to flail uselessly was a small chain of gold with a modest cross upon it. Which the dolphin's eyes seemed to be glancing at Samantha and then looking towards again to draw attention to it. At the same time, the limb twitched to send the golden cross spinning to gleam in the sun. It was the same necklace that Jasmine had been wearing beneath her wetsuit before disappearing.

No one was willing to accept it at that moment, but Jasmine Irving had left the world of humanity. Never to return. That shock was nothing compared to the moment when Jasmine told them she had done it willingly and the reasons why.