Raining Legs

We don’t need to move to rest. I don’t know why they started saying that or how it caught on. It always struck me as rather poor detective work on their part. They drop into my home unannounced, their fleshy bodies flopping about in the water, making all of my food friends flee, only to go completely still when they see me, as if I’ll suddenly think they’re just a piece of floating algae that’s temporarily misbehaving.

When I do decide to venture closer, to see what or who it is that has decided to bother me so, they burst into movement, lashing out with poles or flailing their way back to the surface and onto their little boats, only to come thrashing down again moments later in their strange steel boxes.

Eventually they leave, the metal teeth of their boats tearing into the water, causing ripples from their frenzy to wash over me. My mind will not quiet. I do not know when they’ll come again, when their pale little legs will once again start to dance upon my sky.

And so I swim, around and around until the pain in my neck is too much and I cannot turn my great white head anymore. I start to swim in rows. I can feel them watching.

Later on their boats, they’ll talk to each other grinning, high on their discovery, “This was conclusive. We’ve done it. They never stop moving. They rest as they go-- they never stop moving. We watched him for hours. At first we thought it erratic, but it seems as they grow tired at first they move in circles and then....”

I drift into the depths, my body a massive muscle that can’t relax, the sea behind me littered with the corpses of my food friends that they toss out into the water to taunt me. I feel some ancient hunger in me, but I will not shame myself by surviving on their charity. I will just drift. Deeper and deeper into the depths until my world is dark and timeless. I rest.