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Description
My life is split into three pieces.

The first is almost a dream now. Living in the small house in the village, the smell of fish so constant I never realized it was there. My mother, my father, both browned from the sun and rough from the sea. My older brother, tall and long limbed, climbing trees or masts, kicking down through dark water to get at the fat blue oysters bedded on the bottom. My round little brother, still chubby enough to float if he fell off the boat, splashing and squealing in the waves.

I remember standing on the shore, waves booming on the rocks, the stone cold and rough under my bare feet. I loved the sea, and hated it, because without it we were nothing, and yet we only were allowed to touch the edges of it, like a child dipping his toes in a pond. I dreamed of being allowed below the waves, to the deepness I could see but not get to. I had moments of righteous anger that we weren't allowed further, that we had to stay on the surface or risk destruction, that we were forced to set up elaborate warning systems in case one of the true masters of the sea passed too close. My father hauled me bodily out of the water several times, his hands catching my wind-milling arms, his voice dark and amused. "Sepia, my little warrior, you cannot bruise the sea. Hush now. Hush."

I don't remember growing up; I just remember *being* there, on the shore, on the boat, in the house, my entire life made up of gray wood and gray sea, salt and sand.

The second piece of my life is a fraction of the first. In its entirety, it lasts perhaps ten minutes. In those minutes, however, everything I was and could have been changed.

My memory of it is patchy. I learned later that your mind can block out things that are traumatic. I don't know if it is that, or if the anger burned the memories away. It was near dusk, I remember, and we were hauling up the last crab pots. It was my tenth birthday, and my father had walked all the way to the next village for a present for me, and we had been late to put to sea. We really should have gone in earlier, but the pots had been unusually full, stuffed to the brim, in fact, and my father didn't want to waste such a good catch. I remember looking up at him, the sun setting slowly over his shoulder, his face peaceful as he looked across the sea.

There was no warning from the watchtowers.

My next memory is of kicking to the surface, the remains of the boat raining down around me. My ears were ringing, and I couldn't hear my mother screaming, though I could see her in the water, clinging to my little brother and kicking desperately for shore.

And then she just wasn't anymore. A tentacle the size of our house rose out of the water between us, water and seaweed dripping off the pebbled skin. Up and up it came, immense, a column of living meat rising from the sea. The wave of its passing pushing me back, and I stared in mute awe as it arched downward, taking my mother with a huge crash of water. My father bobbed to the surface, his face ashen. As if in slow motion, I saw him turn to me, his mouth opening, yelling my name, before a smaller tentacle plucked him out of the water, tossing him to a dark mass yards and yards away, and he was gone.

All of this in silence. I waited for a moment that felt like year for the tentacle to return, to take me, and it wasn't until I felt the first cold brush of it against my leg that I realized what was going on. The sea that I loved was taking my family, one by one, and this behemoth was her messenger. I had wanted more of the sea, and it had come for me.

The anger that rose in me was amazing, hot and pure and electric. It restored my hearing, and the roar of the beast vibrated in my head like the crash of a giant wave. I found myself scrabbling for the tentacle, wrapping my legs around it even as it wrapped me in its embrace. It was warm compared to the swirling of the sea, and the dinner-plate sized suckers plucked at my shirt, my pants, before finding and adhering to skin. I dug my fingers in, holding on, as it pulled me from the sea. The wind whistled in my ears as it hauled back and shot forward, the curl of it opening at the last minute to toss me like a bit of fish into its mouth.

I did not go.

I clung, barnacle like, to it as it whipped to and fro, trying to shake me off. I crowed, something between a whoop of laughter and a clot of pain splattering out of me to rain down on my shattered sea. The sea and sky blended into a single mottled blur, gray and darker gray. My hair swung out from my face and rebounded, slapping me with wet strands. I laughed harder, my fingers breaking suddenly into warm wetness, and the thing squealed, the noise high and warbling on the edge of my hearing. It made my teeth hurt.

I buried my teeth in the skin in front of me, its blood bursting across my tongue, burning foulness like rotten fish full of fire. I gagged, pulling my lips back enough to spit the blood down my chin but not letting go. The monster shrieked again, and another tentacle slammed against my back, the tip worming between me and the tentacle I clung to. It yanked, and something snapped in my chest. I jerked, my fingers and toes coming free. I tore a chunk out of it with my teeth, hot blood splashing on my face as the second tentacle pulled me away, the first slithering back into the sea. My hair streamed up as the tentacle suddenly dropped, and I gasped in a blood flecked breath just before we plunged into the water.

Bubbles around me, flashes of white behind my eyes, my chest stabbing with pain. I wrapped around the barrel-thick tentacle, digging at the skin as it pulled me through the water. Down we went, my ears aching, then screaming, then something like a cold explosion in one ear and then the other. Pain like being stabbed exploded in my head. I tore at the suction cups near my face with my teeth, maddened by pain, my entire focus on pushing as much pain out of myself into it. It jerked in my arms, but didn't let go.

We slowed, stopped. I felt my hair drifting against my face. The water was very cold. I lifted my face from the ruin I had made, blood streaming from the wound to wash warm on my face. I forced my eyes open. Far above, the sun still shone, slanting across the surface of the water and dangling indifferent fingers of light down into the darkness. Everything was blurry, the familiar salt sting in my eyes eclipsed by the pain in my chest and ears. Ahead of me, something glittered in the deep blue dark. The water vibrated against me, and I could see the thing's beak, open and screaming. I screamed back, bubbles bursting from my mouth.

The memory fractures here, as it throws me into its mouth. All is confusion, and I can't feel my broken ribs, I can't feel the pain in my ears or my desperate lack of air. All I feel is unbelievable anger at this creature, and the determination that it will not end this way. Intense pressure, wet cold smothering, and the thought goes through my mind, the last sane gasp of survival:

No. You will not swallow me, not while I live.

The pain in my ribs blinks out, my ears fizz for a moment, and I can hear again. Suddenly I don't care about the lack of air. My arms, weak from fighting, strengthen again. Light glimmers on the undulating spotted throat I'm being shoved down.

My hands claw and find purchase, and I punch through its esophagus. I get one hand out, feeling for purchase in the scalding flood on the other side, and find a ropy strand of something. The thing's heartbeat is hammering around me, and I get my other hand out through the hole I have made, forcing my head through, ripping it open. I claw again, pulling my body through the hole. I crouch, toes burrowed into stringy muscle, fingers searching around me for indications of where to go. I pause, then press my face into one section, nuzzling muscle aside with my nose, and wait, feeling the cooler outer skin against my face. This time it is easier, punching through the skin as if it's a blanket, rather than half a foot of fat and hide. The water is like ice around my thrusting hand, and I flex it for a moment, feeling the water shift around my fingers. I chew at the hole, opening it wider, and the creature is thrashing around me, hot blood behind me forcing me against the puncture in its throat, and I claw my way free in a burst of heat, born out into the sea.

The creature thunders over me, blocking out the light as it disappears in a swirl of blood and tentacles, lit by the light from my forehead. I kick for the surface leisurely, the blood on my face, my hair, washing clean in the cold silent water, and I am not afraid.

***

The third part of my life started where the second ended, when Luna came to me as I broke the surface, her hand poised to lift me gently from the water. We stood on nothing, a foot from the empty expanse of sea. She smoothed my hair, told me I was a brave girl, and promised that I could survive anything. She was beautiful. She looked like my mother. Where she touched me my hair sloughed away, thick tenticles bursting from my skin to roil against my suddenly smooth scalp. I looked up at her, and she smiled, putting a finger to my lips as if to silence me. I fell backwards, my face melting away from her touch, and by the time I hit the water I was no longer human, I was something sleek and tentacled and fast.

I wandered a while in the water, forgetting humans for a time, exploring the ocean with new eyes. Tentacles pulling me along, hiding in rocks and riding on waves, I felt clean and pure and wholly unconcerned with the passage of months.

I found an island of albatross, and spent a day in the shallows, watching them waddle and flap. Eventually, I came closer and watched one in particular, leaving my octopoid form for the first time to lie in the sun, studying it intently. It had never seen a human before, let alone one that pulled itself out of the water as an octopus, and had no fear of me. As the sun baked my skin, I learned everything I could about the life of an albatross. It did not take very long.

As the sun sank, I found myself crouched, waiting for it to make its final turn around the beach and return to the nest. It clacked at me as it passed, apparently deciding I was some kind of odd, but harmless, sea creature.

The birds exploded from the beach as I struck, snapping my chosen's neck before the sand from my dash settled. My mouth filled with saliva, drooling down onto the snowy breast in ropey strands. I crunched into it, the blood sweet and hot to my throat, and I snarled, chewing deeper. It was the first hot meat I had tasted in months. It was only later that something drove me to I climb the hill, to stand on the cliff and shift into the bird form, feeling the wind ruffle new feathers and the small crown of tentacles on my head.

Flying was amazing. I found islands untouched by man or beast, still warm to the touch from whatever formed them. I soared into storms raging above the sea, and found the limitations of my wings. I crashed to the water time and time again, trying to fly faster, or higher, or turn at the last possible second to not crash into the cliff. I changed mid flight, falling, spreading my tentacles out and letting the wind buffet me. I shifted from human to octopus to bird and back again, confusing shoals of silvery fish who didn't know where to run to. I slept on the tops of rocks hundreds of feet above sea level, my only blanket a mat of seaweed dragged up with me. When I woke, confused seaweed crabs sat at the edge of the rock, pondering how they got there and how to get down again. I watched their eye-stalks twitch in the high thin wind, and made a bundle of hardening seaweed to take them back to the water.

I may have stayed out there forever if it hadn't been for the Jackal King.

A storm brought me to him. I had been racing it, flying just before the leading edge of rain, stressing my wings to keep ahead. Thunder roared overhead, lightening crackled through the clouds. I had been out in it for hours, rushing Eastward, sailing over the occasional rocky outcropping. Sudden brightness, and a feeling like being hit from behind with a hammer.

I awoke slowly, aware first that I was wrapped in something warm, the smell of burning wood in my nose. It was such a strange feeling that I froze, unsure what was going on. I cracked open one eye, seeing firelight play on a fluttering roof of canvas. Sharp, hollow breaking sounds from somewhere near me. Cautiously, I sat up.

I was in some kind of tent, sand floored and canvas roofed. A blanket that smelled like death and fish; sealskin. Something roughly man-shaped crouched across from me, cracking noisily at a bone. I stared at him for a long moment, my head tentacles bunching and relaxing.

It wasn't until then that I remembered I was human.

"Hullo?" I said, my voice scratchy and odd. It didn't feel like I was speaking correctly; it was hollow and weird, with none of the vibrato it should have had.

The man thing looked up. He was old, I could tell. Even with the long black muzzle and pointed ears, he looked ancient. His hands, human enough, pulled the bone from between his teeth. He pushed himself to his feet, brushing sand from the rough sealskin loincloth. Bracelets glittered on his arms.

"Good. You wake. Good." he said, his voice heavily accented. "Much to do. Hurry up. Hurry. I die soon."

And so the third part of my life was shaped, not by my family, not by fate, but by an old man with a grudge. The next weeks were made of blood, and pain, and anger, as he forged me into the weapon he wanted. Old, but strong, and he beat me until I couldn't move, then made me move anyway. The next time I could fight longer, before being thrown to the rocky sand outside the hut. And the next... and the next.... and eventually he would drag me into the tent by an arm or foot, wrap me in sealskin and pour warm broth down my throat while I healed. He told me stories, too. As much to hear his own voice as to talk to me, I think. He told me of his homeland, of endless sun and burning sand, of how he hated the cold wet nothing of the sea. He was never warm enough here.

He told me of ourselves, as well. I learned what I was, what I could become. I learned what he wanted me to do. And I learned to love the fight, the burn, the glory when you won. The Jackal King could no longer swim for long distances, could no longer fly as the great winged bird he claimed was one of his forms... He could no longer truly fight, not against someone at full strength. He knew the ways of the tattoos, locked me into a form that was useful to him. And he kept pushing, and pushing, and then, something in me snapped, and as the sun set, the island was bathed in red.

The moon rose over the little rocky outcropping. The tent made a fine funeral pyre. I stood, the Jackal King's bracelets still warm from his body. I spared one last glance at his body, finally warm in the flames that rose above his broken muzzle, and then turned west, toward the mainland.

I had somewhere to be.

Description
My life is split into three pieces.

The first is almost a dream now. Living in the small house in the village, the smell of fish so constant I never realized it was there. My mother, my father, both browned from the sun and rough from the sea. My older brother, tall and long limbed, climbing trees or masts, kicking down through dark water to get at the fat blue oysters bedded on the bottom. My round little brother, still chubby enough to float if he fell off the boat, splashing and squealing in the waves.

I remember standing on the shore, waves booming on the rocks, the stone cold and rough under my bare feet. I loved the sea, and hated it, because without it we were nothing, and yet we only were allowed to touch the edges of it, like a child dipping his toes in a pond. I dreamed of being allowed below the waves, to the deepness I could see but not get to. I had moments of righteous anger that we weren't allowed further, that we had to stay on the surface or risk destruction, that we were forced to set up elaborate warning systems in case one of the true masters of the sea passed too close. My father hauled me bodily out of the water several times, his hands catching my wind-milling arms, his voice dark and amused. "Sepia, my little warrior, you cannot bruise the sea. Hush now. Hush."

I don't remember growing up; I just remember *being* there, on the shore, on the boat, in the house, my entire life made up of gray wood and gray sea, salt and sand.

The second piece of my life is a fraction of the first. In its entirety, it lasts perhaps ten minutes. In those minutes, however, everything I was and could have been changed.

My memory of it is patchy. I learned later that your mind can block out things that are traumatic. I don't know if it is that, or if the anger burned the memories away. It was near dusk, I remember, and we were hauling up the last crab pots. It was my tenth birthday, and my father had walked all the way to the next village for a present for me, and we had been late to put to sea. We really should have gone in earlier, but the pots had been unusually full, stuffed to the brim, in fact, and my father didn't want to waste such a good catch. I remember looking up at him, the sun setting slowly over his shoulder, his face peaceful as he looked across the sea.

There was no warning from the watchtowers.

My next memory is of kicking to the surface, the remains of the boat raining down around me. My ears were ringing, and I couldn't hear my mother screaming, though I could see her in the water, clinging to my little brother and kicking desperately for shore.

And then she just wasn't anymore. A tentacle the size of our house rose out of the water between us, water and seaweed dripping off the pebbled skin. Up and up it came, immense, a column of living meat rising from the sea. The wave of its passing pushing me back, and I stared in mute awe as it arched downward, taking my mother with a huge crash of water. My father bobbed to the surface, his face ashen. As if in slow motion, I saw him turn to me, his mouth opening, yelling my name, before a smaller tentacle plucked him out of the water, tossing him to a dark mass yards and yards away, and he was gone.

All of this in silence. I waited for a moment that felt like year for the tentacle to return, to take me, and it wasn't until I felt the first cold brush of it against my leg that I realized what was going on. The sea that I loved was taking my family, one by one, and this behemoth was her messenger. I had wanted more of the sea, and it had come for me.

The anger that rose in me was amazing, hot and pure and electric. It restored my hearing, and the roar of the beast vibrated in my head like the crash of a giant wave. I found myself scrabbling for the tentacle, wrapping my legs around it even as it wrapped me in its embrace. It was warm compared to the swirling of the sea, and the dinner-plate sized suckers plucked at my shirt, my pants, before finding and adhering to skin. I dug my fingers in, holding on, as it pulled me from the sea. The wind whistled in my ears as it hauled back and shot forward, the curl of it opening at the last minute to toss me like a bit of fish into its mouth.

I did not go.

I clung, barnacle like, to it as it whipped to and fro, trying to shake me off. I crowed, something between a whoop of laughter and a clot of pain splattering out of me to rain down on my shattered sea. The sea and sky blended into a single mottled blur, gray and darker gray. My hair swung out from my face and rebounded, slapping me with wet strands. I laughed harder, my fingers breaking suddenly into warm wetness, and the thing squealed, the noise high and warbling on the edge of my hearing. It made my teeth hurt.

I buried my teeth in the skin in front of me, its blood bursting across my tongue, burning foulness like rotten fish full of fire. I gagged, pulling my lips back enough to spit the blood down my chin but not letting go. The monster shrieked again, and another tentacle slammed against my back, the tip worming between me and the tentacle I clung to. It yanked, and something snapped in my chest. I jerked, my fingers and toes coming free. I tore a chunk out of it with my teeth, hot blood splashing on my face as the second tentacle pulled me away, the first slithering back into the sea. My hair streamed up as the tentacle suddenly dropped, and I gasped in a blood flecked breath just before we plunged into the water.

Bubbles around me, flashes of white behind my eyes, my chest stabbing with pain. I wrapped around the barrel-thick tentacle, digging at the skin as it pulled me through the water. Down we went, my ears aching, then screaming, then something like a cold explosion in one ear and then the other. Pain like being stabbed exploded in my head. I tore at the suction cups near my face with my teeth, maddened by pain, my entire focus on pushing as much pain out of myself into it. It jerked in my arms, but didn't let go.

We slowed, stopped. I felt my hair drifting against my face. The water was very cold. I lifted my face from the ruin I had made, blood streaming from the wound to wash warm on my face. I forced my eyes open. Far above, the sun still shone, slanting across the surface of the water and dangling indifferent fingers of light down into the darkness. Everything was blurry, the familiar salt sting in my eyes eclipsed by the pain in my chest and ears. Ahead of me, something glittered in the deep blue dark. The water vibrated against me, and I could see the thing's beak, open and screaming. I screamed back, bubbles bursting from my mouth.

The memory fractures here, as it throws me into its mouth. All is confusion, and I can't feel my broken ribs, I can't feel the pain in my ears or my desperate lack of air. All I feel is unbelievable anger at this creature, and the determination that it will not end this way. Intense pressure, wet cold smothering, and the thought goes through my mind, the last sane gasp of survival:

No. You will not swallow me, not while I live.

The pain in my ribs blinks out, my ears fizz for a moment, and I can hear again. Suddenly I don't care about the lack of air. My arms, weak from fighting, strengthen again. Light glimmers on the undulating spotted throat I'm being shoved down.

My hands claw and find purchase, and I punch through its esophagus. I get one hand out, feeling for purchase in the scalding flood on the other side, and find a ropy strand of something. The thing's heartbeat is hammering around me, and I get my other hand out through the hole I have made, forcing my head through, ripping it open. I claw again, pulling my body through the hole. I crouch, toes burrowed into stringy muscle, fingers searching around me for indications of where to go. I pause, then press my face into one section, nuzzling muscle aside with my nose, and wait, feeling the cooler outer skin against my face. This time it is easier, punching through the skin as if it's a blanket, rather than half a foot of fat and hide. The water is like ice around my thrusting hand, and I flex it for a moment, feeling the water shift around my fingers. I chew at the hole, opening it wider, and the creature is thrashing around me, hot blood behind me forcing me against the puncture in its throat, and I claw my way free in a burst of heat, born out into the sea.

The creature thunders over me, blocking out the light as it disappears in a swirl of blood and tentacles, lit by the light from my forehead. I kick for the surface leisurely, the blood on my face, my hair, washing clean in the cold silent water, and I am not afraid.

***

The third part of my life started where the second ended, when Luna came to me as I broke the surface, her hand poised to lift me gently from the water. We stood on nothing, a foot from the empty expanse of sea. She smoothed my hair, told me I was a brave girl, and promised that I could survive anything. She was beautiful. She looked like my mother. Where she touched me my hair sloughed away, thick tenticles bursting from my skin to roil against my suddenly smooth scalp. I looked up at her, and she smiled, putting a finger to my lips as if to silence me. I fell backwards, my face melting away from her touch, and by the time I hit the water I was no longer human, I was something sleek and tentacled and fast.

I wandered a while in the water, forgetting humans for a time, exploring the ocean with new eyes. Tentacles pulling me along, hiding in rocks and riding on waves, I felt clean and pure and wholly unconcerned with the passage of months.

I found an island of albatross, and spent a day in the shallows, watching them waddle and flap. Eventually, I came closer and watched one in particular, leaving my octopoid form for the first time to lie in the sun, studying it intently. It had never seen a human before, let alone one that pulled itself out of the water as an octopus, and had no fear of me. As the sun baked my skin, I learned everything I could about the life of an albatross. It did not take very long.

As the sun sank, I found myself crouched, waiting for it to make its final turn around the beach and return to the nest. It clacked at me as it passed, apparently deciding I was some kind of odd, but harmless, sea creature.

The birds exploded from the beach as I struck, snapping my chosen's neck before the sand from my dash settled. My mouth filled with saliva, drooling down onto the snowy breast in ropey strands. I crunched into it, the blood sweet and hot to my throat, and I snarled, chewing deeper. It was the first hot meat I had tasted in months. It was only later that something drove me to I climb the hill, to stand on the cliff and shift into the bird form, feeling the wind ruffle new feathers and the small crown of tentacles on my head.

Flying was amazing. I found islands untouched by man or beast, still warm to the touch from whatever formed them. I soared into storms raging above the sea, and found the limitations of my wings. I crashed to the water time and time again, trying to fly faster, or higher, or turn at the last possible second to not crash into the cliff. I changed mid flight, falling, spreading my tentacles out and letting the wind buffet me. I shifted from human to octopus to bird and back again, confusing shoals of silvery fish who didn't know where to run to. I slept on the tops of rocks hundreds of feet above sea level, my only blanket a mat of seaweed dragged up with me. When I woke, confused seaweed crabs sat at the edge of the rock, pondering how they got there and how to get down again. I watched their eye-stalks twitch in the high thin wind, and made a bundle of hardening seaweed to take them back to the water.

I may have stayed out there forever if it hadn't been for the Jackal King.

A storm brought me to him. I had been racing it, flying just before the leading edge of rain, stressing my wings to keep ahead. Thunder roared overhead, lightening crackled through the clouds. I had been out in it for hours, rushing Eastward, sailing over the occasional rocky outcropping. Sudden brightness, and a feeling like being hit from behind with a hammer.

I awoke slowly, aware first that I was wrapped in something warm, the smell of burning wood in my nose. It was such a strange feeling that I froze, unsure what was going on. I cracked open one eye, seeing firelight play on a fluttering roof of canvas. Sharp, hollow breaking sounds from somewhere near me. Cautiously, I sat up.

I was in some kind of tent, sand floored and canvas roofed. A blanket that smelled like death and fish; sealskin. Something roughly man-shaped crouched across from me, cracking noisily at a bone. I stared at him for a long moment, my head tentacles bunching and relaxing.

It wasn't until then that I remembered I was human.

"Hullo?" I said, my voice scratchy and odd. It didn't feel like I was speaking correctly; it was hollow and weird, with none of the vibrato it should have had.

The man thing looked up. He was old, I could tell. Even with the long black muzzle and pointed ears, he looked ancient. His hands, human enough, pulled the bone from between his teeth. He pushed himself to his feet, brushing sand from the rough sealskin loincloth. Bracelets glittered on his arms.

"Good. You wake. Good." he said, his voice heavily accented. "Much to do. Hurry up. Hurry. I die soon."

And so the third part of my life was shaped, not by my family, not by fate, but by an old man with a grudge. The next weeks were made of blood, and pain, and anger, as he forged me into the weapon he wanted. Old, but strong, and he beat me until I couldn't move, then made me move anyway. The next time I could fight longer, before being thrown to the rocky sand outside the hut. And the next... and the next.... and eventually he would drag me into the tent by an arm or foot, wrap me in sealskin and pour warm broth down my throat while I healed. He told me stories, too. As much to hear his own voice as to talk to me, I think. He told me of his homeland, of endless sun and burning sand, of how he hated the cold wet nothing of the sea. He was never warm enough here.

He told me of ourselves, as well. I learned what I was, what I could become. I learned what he wanted me to do. And I learned to love the fight, the burn, the glory when you won. The Jackal King could no longer swim for long distances, could no longer fly as the great winged bird he claimed was one of his forms... He could no longer truly fight, not against someone at full strength. He knew the ways of the tattoos, locked me into a form that was useful to him. And he kept pushing, and pushing, and then, something in me snapped, and as the sun set, the island was bathed in red.

The moon rose over the little rocky outcropping. The tent made a fine funeral pyre. I stood, the Jackal King's bracelets still warm from his body. I spared one last glance at his body, finally warm in the flames that rose above his broken muzzle, and then turned west, toward the mainland.

I had somewhere to be.