He lifted a foot, shook off a strand of seaweed, and waded back toward the mangroves. The frenzy would come again. Tomorrow. Next week. The moment the next chunk of bait hit the water, the call would sound, and Kael—patient, grey-feathered Kael—would answer it. Because in the rapid rush, there was no past, no future. Only the beak. Only the now. Only the frantic, beautiful, bloody business of staying alive.
The moment the first chunk of bait hit the water, the surface shattered.
The rapid rush was over.
From the mangrove shoreline, a young heron named Kael watched with an eye that could count fish. He was lean, grey-feathered, and patient by nature. But patience was a luxury that evaporated the moment the tuna scraps hit the current.
He danced. On the surface of a frenzy, you learned to read the wakes. A flat swirl meant a jack turning. A V-shaped cut meant a shark charging. A sudden, sucking void meant a grouper had opened its mouth below. Kael hopped, skipped, and spun, a ballet dancer on a floor made of broken glass and teeth. feeding frenzy rapid rush
He launched.
Kael’s stomach clenched. The rapid rush was a drug. It was a sound—a wet, percussive slap-slap-slap of thousands of tails—and a smell, sharp with blood and brine. His own long legs began to tremble. Not with fear. With the urge. He lifted a foot, shook off a strand
But the frenzy was turning. The water was beginning to glow pink with blood. The smaller mackerel, gorged and stupid, started to flee upward , breaching into the air where the gulls snatched them. Kael felt a sudden, cold pressure against his leg. A shadow. Not a fish. A shark. A blacktip, no longer than his wing, but built of pure gristle and bad intent. It didn't want Kael. It wanted the fish in Kael’s shadow.
Miss. A jack’s flank slid off his mandible. Next week
Not a sound. A pressure. A displacement. The entire school of sardines—thousands of them—imploded into a single, dark sphere and shot straight down. The jacks followed, their silver bodies turning into vertical rain. The surface, for one heartbeat, went still.
Kael stood on the floating carcass of a half-eaten mullet, panting. His chest heaved. His feathers were plastered to his bones with fish oil and spray. He had eaten four fish. Maybe five. His crop bulged.