Chapter Text
In the shadow of a massive coral head, Sen encounters a creature startlingly like herself. A soft round pouch of flesh with writhing, footless limbs.
She has been harbouring certain blasphemous thoughts, desires, about her body, ever since she first ventured out into the river. That seems so long ago, now. But here in the strange Earthly sea, she feels that forbidden ache again. So powerfully that she wonders, for a moment, if the intensity of her desire has manifested this thing that curls and creeps before her eye. It is like a perfected version of her. It is graceful and swift. Though it lacks the digits of an anthropoid hand, its searching limbs are dexterous and powerful. It has two whole and functional eyes which gleam with an alien intelligence. It watches her without paying her any mind, unthreatened by her clumsiness.
Sen follows the thing for a while. She tries her very best to imitate it. The creature suddenly flushes out and seizes up a wriggling decapod, and Sen watches enviously as it devours its prey. It must have not only a mouth but very powerful teeth, to crunch so easily through the chitinous shell.
Presently, Sen finds herself exhausted and oxygen-depleted. She can only breathe so well through her skin, and can only venture out of her armour for so long. She fumbles back to shore and falls into a deep sleep as soon as she has safely rejoined with the life-sustaining systems inside her own shell.
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