THe Shape of the Ocean
In the tide pool, cool under the early dawn and fading starlight, one of two cuttlefish was recounting the dream from which she had awoken. Both had become trapped in the pool during high tide. They glowed with a kind of purple iridescence.
“I was dreaming about the moon,” she said. “As I always am dreaming.”
The hair bristled along my spine, mere meters away.
She continued, underwater: “The moon had a huge net wrapped about the ocean, which it used to pull at us, pull at the water. There was no sloshing; the moon pulled gently and methodically, in and out.”
“Okay,” said the other cuttlefish.
“But the thing is that the net, the pressure from the water swirling, exerted a specific kind of gravity – in particular, on our sexual organs, on the tentacles and receiving places that, as you know, grow from our faces.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. And more than that, depending on the day, the time of year – depending on how and when the moon pulled – that gravity would affect the sex, it would influence how the resulting eggs and hatch, children and adults, would turn out: their personalities, their moods, their predilection for dreams. It was as if the moon was a kind of third partner, her touch refracted through surface water and ferried on a secret, inward tide.”
The second cuttlefish turned, turned blue, and scuttled to the far end of the tide pool, inches away. It flashed black and white spots, alternating. The meaning was indeterminate.
“Why are you blinking at me like that?” asked the first fish. The second fish fizzled in a dimension of light unperceivable to humans, flashed heated emotions.
“In your dream,” he finally responded, “The moon must have been cruel.”
Ocean waves crashed on nearby rocks, dappling the tide pool surface with quick inflections of color and texture.
He went on.
“Just by choosing – could she not? – she could favor some, raise them up. She could give them beauty, personal power, strength. She could also hold others down, couldn’t she? Bury them with the pain of bad personality and bad decisions? Neither would know why, but they would see themselves, not the moon, as the culprit. The moon flings her net like a toy; it delivers with the power of a curse.”
“Yikes,” said the first cuttlefish. “But it’s not like that, though... Fish choose how to act, don’t they? The moon doesn’t control them.”
The sun had begun to rise in earnest, putting currents of heat into the water that began to wrap around the cuttlefish, constricting an already confined space. My fur, by contrast, felt light and warm in the breeze.
“Choose or not, some are born, because of your moon, in suffering,” continued the second. The zebra-like stripes along his side appeared to move kinetically, as alternating red and white waves, front to back. He grabbed a pebble with one tentacle and nervously tensed and relaxed the bundle in a tight, fiddlehead-like spiral. Through his mildly translucent body, one could see all three hearts beating.
“But maybe this is hard for you to see,” he went on, “because the moon has made you, of all, the most beautiful.”
With discomfort, an electric jolt discharged from the corner of her mouth, of the beautiful fish, and traced a turbulent arc clear to the end of her tail. She paused, had the wisdom to pause, for three moments. Her gills released thin ribbons of cool blue water throughout the tide pool. Anemones lining the rock walls reached out in pleasure.
“Do you feel you have been treated unfairly by the moon?” she asked plainly. “Voice your grievance – what we’re talking about isn’t real.”
“But it – !” He lurched forward in excitement, and ink burst from him involuntarily. He turned a sour, milkily greening yellow, an expression of shame.
“Look,” – he carried on, despite, waving away the cloud – “It is real. We’re stuck in this tide pool together. And you affect the space in this beautiful, soothing way – it was made for you to inhabit…”
He droned on, and she felt, by moment, more uncomfortable in the pool. The rising water wouldn’t form a bridge to the ocean for another hour, at least. She looked at him; he was looking at the ground.
“What would you do, if you were the moon?” she asked. He paused.
“I would let go of the net.”
At that moment, a plastic grocery bag, blowing in the wind, became stuck on the tide pool surface, dimming the light. It scared the beautiful cuttlefish, and she flashed a brief, multi-colored strobe: from above, one might imagine a nighttime circus tent. The next moment, the bag blew into the ocean.
The soft hair on my back bristled – the flash had caught my eye – and stood straight up.
“I’m sorry,” she said, startled. “But you have to make an actual choice. What do you do with the net?”
By this point, the second fish had moved among the anemones lining the wall behind him, and so appeared as if invisible. There may have been just one cuttlefish in the pool.
“You’re acting like a child,” she replied.
“Please. Quiet,” he whispered urgently. A tentacle wrapped around his eye, but did not sting.
“If you were the moon,” she repeated, as suddenly, two heavenly bodies descended behind her on a sweeping arc, came to hover an inch above the tide pool surface. “What would you do?”
I sat at the rim’s edge, an electric wire of attentiveness, my paws overhanging.
She looked up.
I dipped my paw on the surface, and tiny waves reflected rippling galaxies far, far overhead. I pushed further, eased my paw through the boundary, and laid five clawed toes to rest on the head of the most beautiful cuttlefish in the world.
“I am the threat of material violence,” I said. I smiled.
To the fish, my vanta black fur obscured all but the lightness of my eyes. She instinctively mirrored them. She also mirrored a thin trail of red escaping into the black abyss.
“Let’s think of an experiment,” I said.
She looked straight into my eyes.
“Let’s pretend you have the power to shape the ocean.”