Lost At Sea

“Would it be so terrible?” Samson had asked his father, back when there were other sea-dragons for him to talk to. “If they remembered us?”

“Look at how much help we are asked to give when they don’t,” his father had replied. They gave their help for fear of their power drying up, but they were a secretive species. They didn’t encourage conversation. They didn’t welcome visitors. They didn’t have friends.

But then when the sea-dragons had needed help, no one remembered them, no one could help them and Samson was the only one to survive.


Samson didn’t know why they were forgotten. He didn’t know whether it was voluntary or involuntary.
He did know, now, that if their power wasn’t used, it didn’t dry up. But it wasn’t comfortable, so he chose to help a purple and silver starfish who sang out-of-tune every night as the moon rose.

For two weeks, Samson used his magic to build a reef, an exciting reef with passages and skylights and nooks and crannies for the starfish’s small relatives to hide in. The starfish helped him with lifting and carrying.

They sang together when the moon rose.

They stayed side-by-side night and day.


There was a group of lobsters who had become tangled in rope near a sunken fishing boat.

“You’re a sea-dragon!” they wondered aloud, as Samson used the spines on his fins to slice through their bounds. He raised his snout high at their gratitude.

They wouldn’t let him stay with them after they’d dined together. He returned the next morning.

“You’re a sea-dragon!” they wondered aloud.


He went back to see his old friend.

“How do you know who I am?” asked the starfish

Samson said nothing.

“How do you know where I live?”

Samson said nothing.

He watched as his friend scuttled away, leaving a purple and silver trail. The starfish wondered why he was watching. Then he forgot to wonder. Then he forgot altogether.


A thunderstorm hit the sea. The waves lifted and crashed, taking creatures and homes with them, smashing against the rocks. A hermit crab, sheltering under coral and watching the shell it had lived in being destroyed against the ocean floor, saw Samson watching, magic that had gone unspent glittering within his scales.

“You could have helped!” he shouted. “You’re a sea-dragon! You could have helped, couldn’t you?”

Samson turned and glided away.

“I’ll never forgive you!” the crab screamed. “I’ll never forget this!”

But as Samson faded into a glimmer in the water, he forgot his anger. Then he forgot Samson. Then he forgot sea-dragons ever existed.

Again.


For a while Samson drifted. It was all he really wanted to do.

He drifted into lonely shallows, ice-cold, where only tiny, dim-witted creatures swam, and expelled his magic, the magic the crab had wanted, against a rock to make a hole that only he could see. When the sun came up, there would be warmth and light, and shelter in his rock.

At least no one would bother him, making him help when he didn’t feel like helping.

At least, he reflected, he was free from recrimination. There wasn’t much difference between this and being invisible in the first place. Absolved of blame, he could be absolved of guilt.

At least there was that.