Luminous

Elsa walked along the beach of black gritty sand, the glass knife in her webbed fingers gleamed with wetness she had killed the shark, it was on the beach where none would touch it regardless of the amount of meat it held.  Not once she told the elders about the attack anyway.  Out of the team of five hunting for more of the precious magnesium nodules that littered the sea floor, she was the only one to return and as unscathed as she appeared she doubted she would want to do the work again not now.

But it didn’t make sense they had look outs, Malc and Tanctum had been on look out – how had they missed the sharks?  The water was transparent with the light rippling through it.

Elsa thought she saw why some argued the sharks were sentient and to be left alone but after today? She wasn’t sure they should be left, she felt a chill at the thought of exterminating the sharks – of hunting them down one at a time, taking out the packs.  Maybe the elders would have a better way?  Shark meat was her favourite meat as well but how could she eat it now after seeing the water clouded with red, ragged white frothed fragments of her friends floating around her.  Shark attacks happened Elsa knew that but not if you were in a group!

None had been reported for a long time but there had been a number of disappearances lately, Elsa gagged at the thought.

Tired and injured she couldn’t carry the corpse with her, she dragged herself up the slopes of one of the outer islands, she was safe, someone would find her. To her surprise Fentik was standing there watching her, his long rob had left a trail in the sand.

‘Elder,’ she said bowing as best she could but she was feeling… wobbly.

‘Come you must give your report,’ he said his flat nostrils flaring, she nodded and followed. The council all seemed to be there, she wanted to ask how. Slumping she told of how they had been hunting a shoal of sliver backs as a snack before hauling back a bumper crop of nodules when a shark was spotted, they didn’t get a chance to deviate before the other shadows seemed to appear from no where and the rest was frantic blood and guts.

With tears she said how Malc was a good look out and about just how clear the water had been.

‘You will not tell anyone this,’ Frentik said.

‘But sir we need to stop hunting them or completely exterminate them! Or something.’

‘It is… complicated, the shark you landed on the beach has been brought to my temporary work room, you will come and see why.’ Nodding and feeling like all she wanted was sleep she followed him. The sharks corpse was laid out on a bench, Fentik examined it grunted with satisfaction and pointed her to an area just behind what was left of it’s gills. They were it’s weak spot, it is how she had defeated the sharks.

There were three lumps, at first she wondered if it was a shark disease or maybe a species marker and then she saw, ‘but… those are glass!’

‘More than that they are optronic transceivers – we think that the sharks are being controlled.’

‘But who would do that? Why would they attack like that?’

‘We think it is a terrorist group, we have put trackers on all our fishers this last year, you are the third survivor, we are loosing so many that soon we will have to rely on our farms.’

She reached up to her necklace her webbed fingers touching the glass beads lightly, so that was how they had found her, their own version was it just a tracker? She hadn’t realised that their technology had reached that sort of level. People would not be happy about it if they knew.

‘So we can not fish?’ she asked as the true horror of the situation struck her.

‘It appears not and we will have to rely on boats and the like for travel between the islands,’ he sighed again, ‘a school trip was wiped out last week.’

She dropped to the floor in shock, ‘no…’ she whispered. Everything they were relied on swimming.

‘Once you are rested and heeled, you will begin training,’ he said and began to walk away.

‘Training for what?’ she asked a harsh brittle note to her voice.

‘You will become a shark hunter, tracker, and you will have weapons.’

‘Weapons?’

‘Light and glass.’

‘Luminous is real?’ she gasped, she’d heard the rumours but…

‘Luminous is real – now rest.’ And he was gone, her stomach flipped and she didn’t think she would ever sleep again, images of the carnage kept floating into her mind. She gritted her small pointed teeth and stood, she would first find someone to bind her wounds and then she would find food. She had to protect her world. She wished that the sharks had been sentient, that was a problem she could have delt with but terrorists? Their own people turned against them?

Shuddering she found a slave to help her, it’s fingers were not webbed but bizarrely they were good swimmers. Fentrik called them land apes, once there had been a war against them or the stock they used to breed them from, where or something. But that had made sense they were different. This however…

She closed her eyes against the pain and prayed to the dolphin god.

Posted: Thursday, July 15th, 2010 @ 10:38 am
Categories: Flash Fiction, The Punks World.
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