We, The Ocean

By Alexandra Brandt

When Thalassa's Children—the mer-like, genderless protectors of the ocean—experience the trapped and suffocating death of one of their own, a single member chooses to take action. Against the wishes of the collective mind.

But can a lone mer ever hope to convince the humans of what they have done to the ocean, in a language they will understand?

And will it be worth losing everything?

"Inventive, heartbreaking, and wholly original." — Kristine Kathryn Rush, Bestselling Author

"The story makes an interesting twist that highlights the dangers of limited understanding and self-referentiality...the author shows surprising subtlety, especially in the final third of the story." — Tangent Magazine

On Tangent Online's Recommended Reading List for 2017

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tangled Sky Press
• Release date: Jul 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386775027

Book preview

We, the Ocean

We, the Ocean

Alexandra Brandt

Tangled Sky Press

Contents

We, the Ocean

Also by Alexandra Brandt

About the Author

We, the Ocean

We hear the distress calls from the dolphins first. They have found the Sentinel who was lost to Us not three nights ago.

All had felt the absence from our collective song then. Our body, our mind, cut off amid strange images of being trapped in darkness, yet trapped in…nothing. Now the dolphins tell a tale of brokenness and death, one we know to be true.

The knowledge ripples through our mind, and we swim in the direction of the dolphins’ call. We are fast, and closest to the fallen one. Our sinuous tail snaps as we dodge between the rocky columns that were the source of our clam-collecting mission, now abandoned. Our hand swipes impatiently at the slick, clinging kelp forest that bars our way. If we were less disciplined, we would take our bone knife to it and have done, but that is not our way.

We smell the death long before we see it. Death…and something else, familiar and faintly acrid.

Kteei is there, as we knew they would be. This particular dolphin will often linger near our Watch, as they seem to have an inordinate fondness for our company. They circle agitatedly, occasionally keening softly. Their eyes, normally so bright and curious, are distressed, and they bump their sleek blue-grey head against us as we try to move forward.

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