Rajnar Vajra: Her Scales Shine Like Music

I don’t know when I drifted off, but woke up chilled in the opalescent twilight, stood up, activated heating in my parka, and wrapped myself in the blanket. The colors were now too good to miss. One of the house-sized bubbles, like an igloo made of rainbows, rose up within throwing distance of the shore. As it finally popped, another appeared immediately, much closer to me. Interesting. I’d never seen two appear in such close succession. When something stirred the water again, I figured a third psychedelic pocket of splendor was on the way.

Instead, something solid and exceedingly strange gradually emerged from the water. I couldn’t quite distinguish its shape at first because it was highly reflective, but thought it had three huge eyes, if they were eyes—two close together on the front of its head, if that was a head, and one toward the top. The front eyes stayed aimed directly at me, and if the thing had moved in my direction or done anything vaguely threatening, I would’ve run like hell.

Whatever it was, it remained dead still, front eyes now level with mine, wavelets gently splashing against its sides. No sign of mouth, gills, or a blowhole. I couldn’t imagine how it kept so steady in the water, and sincerely hoped that it wasn’t standing on the lake bed four kilometers below. As my own eyes or my brain adjusted, I could tell the thing vaguely resembled a horse covered in small, very shiny hexagonal scales. Only this equine was about mastodon-size and twice as wide.

Artist would’ve called this a “tableau.” The thing stared at me and I stared back as the sky so slowly faded and the first hyper-twinkled stars appeared. Any thought of fetching recording equipment from my shelter never crossed my mind, and retrieving the wave rifle didn’t get within a light-year. Just as the first of Sonnet’s moons peeked over a distant mountain range, my companion eased downward and smoothly vanished underwater without changing its upright position.

“What,” I asked the universe after a few minutes, “the hell was that?” Rather than wait around for an answer, I jogged back to my shelter, bringing only the blanket along. I set the tent’s lume-room panels brighter than usual, pulled out a packet labeled “lentil stew,” and put it back. No appetite. Only sleep, I thought, would do me good. Still, I sat for a time, heart slowly un-pounding, before trusting my head to the puff pillow. Thus began a long night of shivers, although I wasn’t cold. In the very early morning, an interesting thought arose: What made me so sure my new pal was confined to the lake?

I awoke after a last-hour uneasy nap and found my tent battery fully charged from yesterday’s abundant sunshine, despite the trivial draw from running last night’s illumination for an extra hour. This meant I could waste another day buried in virtual occupations. Games, shows, and a pantheon of other electronic time-eaters lay beckoning, likewise a few chores such as digging a second latrine, and my kettlebells seemed to sulk from disuse.

I got dressed, grabbed my chair, hauled it down to the beach, and set it next to my whitepad and last evening’s mostly depleted party supplies. The mixed-nut bag wasn’t quite empty, but only Brazil nuts lurked within, and like all right-thinking people, I put them out of my mind and not in my mouth.

After a quick trip to the latrine and a quick raid on my breakfast supplies, I settled into the chair and slurped lukewarm goo humorously labeled “oatmeal with raisins, brown sugar, and cream.” Breakfast complete, I picked up my pad and stylus, and proceeded to use neither. My eyes seemed glued to the water, which remained slightly calmer than usual and free of monsters.

After a break for lunch, a guilt-provoked brief exercise session, and some clothes-washing that didn’t take long since my wardrobe was so limited, I resumed my post and waited. Artist had accurately measured Sonnet’s rotation speed and reported the world to have a 23.2-hour day. Yet sitting there, the day seemed to stretch for weeks.

In the late afternoon, before the sky even thought of darkening, the creature appeared in the same spot, again heralded by two behemoth bubbles. Sunlight practically sprayed from it in every direction. Damn. Those scales made tarpon skin seem tarnished in comparison, and it dawned on me that the thing was beautiful. I commanded myself to stay calm. Aside from its size, the gorgeous monster posed no obvious threat. Not that I planned to take a swim.

My calmness held well enough as those huge eyes, brighter green in the daylight than emeralds, reached my eye level. But after a pause, they kept rising until they gazed down at mine from at least six meters above water level. That was bad enough, but then I had the biggest shock of my life, far worse than last evening’s record-breaker.

Conceding today’s staring contest, I squinted downward to see if my visitor had fins, legs, or something really creative. That brought on my blood-to-ice-water moment, although at first I thought my eyes were lying. They weren’t. Turned out the giant equine’s lower half smoothly merged into something unbelievably larger. The water horse clearly wasn’t a creature in itself, but an extrusion from the back of an aquatic titan shaped like a blue whale, but easily three times longer. Several meters of restless water and hints of sun-cast caustics obscured that back, but it seemed covered in gleaming hexagonal scales similar to those of its… living conning tower, but far larger.

Something akin to countless tendrils or fronds surrounded the leviathan, but this vague forest floated deeper down, hard to distinguish. I looked upward and met those glowing eyes again, and once again, tableau time…

Don’t know how minutes passed, but a lot of them evaporated before I noticed the change. So very slowly, the eyes were rising even higher while moving farther away. As those eyes gradually became obscured by intervening surfaces, I saw what was happening. This whale’s whale had been progressively tilting. I had no idea what this signified or what consequences would be coming my way, but from how my heart hammered on my ribcage, at least one part of me felt less than safe.

When the front end finally surfaced, a cascade pouring off it as a skyscraper of a head rose above water level, I found a new set of eyes staring at me, a quartet of immense, blazing green diamonds.

Some detached part of my mind decided this was the perfect moment to become a media-style commentator: You know, Ross, that the colossal squid sports the largest eyes of any Earth animal. Isn’t it interesting that such a squid could fit most of its body within one of those eyes?

Interesting? Fucking terrifying.

I caught a hint of something, possibly a mouth, far enough beneath the eyes to be submerged, and wondered how something so vast could survive on a world that might have just two living creatures. What could it eat? That line of thought led straight to panic, and I pulled myself back to the moment.

Silence. Both of us motionless except for occasional violent bursts as if from underwater jets, presumably from my dance partner’s respiration. Twilight came and went, the first stars arrived and steadily accumulated company. In eerie silence, the monster eased under the water and was gone, leaving behind spreading ripples, the cold punch of genuine awe in my soul, and a few thousand questions.

Before I fell asleep that night, it occurred to me that the alien campers may have departed this world because they’d encountered the giant fish, although I couldn’t guess why that would scare them enough to take off so very posthaste. Another thought shoved the rest aside. One thing for certain: Whatever surprises might come tomorrow, they’d be trivial compared to today’s.