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She shaded her blurred eyes as she walked out onto the beach and down to the water. The sun was bright beyond anything she could remember and burned her stiffened, abrasive skin. When her legs brushed against each other, she heard a rasping like sandpaper. She felt ravenous, and she waded into the sea. Underwater, her nostrils flared, sucking in her first watery breaths, and she coughed bubbles until she figured out how to close her throat and pass water over her gills. She swam, sliding her hands down her sides and watching light bounce tiny iridescent flicks off her steel-gray flanks. Her cheekbones tingled. A small fish zipped by and the tingling zapped her with a sharp shock.
She turned her head to follow the prey and swam after it, awkward and weak
and unused to her modified arms and legs. Her belly felt heavy, and she
lay prone in the sea as she kicked her finned feet. She snapped her teeth
in her widened mouth. Giving up on the little fish, she moved up to the
surface, then out toward the opening in the reef where the others were. |
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