2. Chapter 2

P ushing my body inward it caused the stored water in my inner chambers to expel out, propelling me through the water. I shot backward, not seeing where I was going, but it didn’t matter. Not in this form. Nestled inside of my shell, I was able to sink into myself and rely on my nautilus’s natural instincts.

My eyes were mere pinpoints in my shifted form, but in the depths of the ocean, where the sun’s light didn’t reach and water distorted, sight wasn’t the most important sense. Smell, taste, touch, vibrations—they were all the vision I needed. My tentacles, or cirri, were constantly feeding me information about my surroundings, all while I stayed tucked into the safety of my shell.

Another push inside, expelling the water in a form of jet propulsion few other sea creatures could accomplish quite like my kind. We were some of the oldest beings in the sea. Well, not me personally, but nautili. Our ancestry goes back to when creatures first left the waters to explore the land. Some of our kind had as well, giving birth to those that could adapt and shift to live on two legs and walk the earth or live in shells with tentacles.

Not every nautilus had this ability; some were base animals who knew no other life. They were smaller, common types. There was only one species of nautilidae remaining that was tethered to the ones of the past who could shift. They once were over ten feet in circumference in their shelled forms, and giants when they took to land. As the world changed and humans began crossing the seas, their size was no longer a benefit, but a weakness. In the millennia since, our forms have decreased in size and comparatively in human form as well so that we no longer stood heads above them, but could blend in. They would never know we didn’t belong if we didn’t want them to.

I was young, younger than most of the higher nautilidae I knew. At twenty-nine years old, I was still considered a youngling. Unmated, untethered, simply floating my way through life. Those of my kind who had developed into sentient beings mated for life. One partner with a bond that linked them, so no matter how far they might drift from each other, they would always be able to find their way back to one another. As if they had been buried so deep inside of the other that they could never be separated again.

Sigh . I darted again, slicing through the water, following the pull I felt inside. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a mate. I did , more than anything. But there weren’t a lot of my kind left, and even if there were, my inner compass always led me to the shore. There had been some that had taken to living on land among the humans, enjoying what it had to offer. It wasn’t for me, though.

I liked the ocean; I liked the comfort and safety my shell provided, and I liked the peace that came with sinking within and letting my creature’s instincts take over. It wasn’t that I never went to the shore. I did, on occasion, visit small islands, preferring ones that weren’t busy, which allowed me time to stretch and release my human body bound up inside. I wasn’t always steady on two legs, but I did enjoy feeling the sun kiss every part of my skin or feeling the air whisper over my body.

There were also sensations I could only experience while in my human form. Things that were not merely for the purpose of living. Ecstasy and pleasure. When I first discovered my penis, and watched it extend, like my cirri, my tentacles, only much different, I nearly went blind for a moment at the lightning sparks of pleasure that rippled through me. With one simple action, I could almost understand the temptation to leave the sea behind.

In our nautilus forms, males had four tentacles that could join together to pump seed for reproduction. It was a function of life, one driven by instinct, not enjoyment. It might as well have been a handshake or a pat on the arm, a transaction. Not that I had done it, I wasn’t interested in fertilization for the sake of it. I wanted a mate, a partner, someone whose touch would light me from within.

Beyond pleasure, though, the earth was dangerous. It was loud, busy, and scary. Perhaps the stories I’d been told when I was younger about our kind being hunted for our shells had played a part, but I’d also seen the dangers for myself. The boats in the ocean that leaked poison. The sea turtles whose shells would never grow properly after being entangled in plastic or netting. If it was this bad in the ocean where people were few, how much worse would it be in populated areas where people were many?

Still, I was drawn to the shore, to the same beach, following that pull within. I migrated throughout the year, seeking cooler waters, always returning to the coast of California during their winter, when the temperatures dipped low enough for me to be comfortable. It was the most dangerous part of the journey I took. Every year I questioned myself, even as I trusted my internal system to guide me.

For over twenty years, I’d traveled and returned to this area at the southern end of California. I glided past a large island about thirty miles off the coast, and something within me started to buzz with anticipation as I drew nearer to the beach. I began climbing out of the depths that my mind relaxed into when I was in my full nautilus form. The human side of me was awakening with a need and longing that I couldn’t quite understand, except for the one image that pierced through every layer of my being.

The human, the man, who, in a panic, I once revealed myself to in my half-shifted form. His fear and awe had vibrated out of him and imprinted itself on me. It had been brief, but something had passed between us then, or at least I thought it had. He had been the first human I’d encountered who, as far as I knew, didn’t know about my kind. It was dangerous and foolish, so much could have gone wrong. But I’d felt this pulse through the water, an anguished, muffled cry, and I reacted without thought, bursting free from my shell and releasing my half-human, half-nautilus form, where I grew bigger and had appendages…arms…that were solid enough to hold the injured man, lifting him to the surface.

I’d propped him against a rock and hid behind another, staying long enough and watching with my human vision to ensure he was safe. Soon, he was surrounded by people frantically treating him, and I could breathe a sigh of relief at last. I thought I saw him look past the group that was strapping his leg to a board and land on me. Afraid he’d seen me, I ducked under the water, swam down to my shell where it rested on the seafloor, and shifted to hide safely within.

As much as I tried to stay away from humans, I also hoped to get to see him again. But the likelihood of finding one particular human when I didn’t leave the water, was like finding a single krill in all the ocean. Still, I usually stayed in the area for a lunar cycle before continuing my migration. Most of the time I would remain in deeper waters in my shell during the busier hours of the day and then would rise to the surface at night and pop my human head out of the water to look around. Sometimes, I would push out of my shell, swimming along the shore with my cirri—my tentacles—pushing my human top half through the water as I explored the coves and rocks.

Something thrummed within me at being here again. It was more than the air that now filled my human lungs after being in my shelled form and breathing through the water. As scary as it was to be near such a busy part of the world, something felt strangely right about it, too.