Kelp, After the Tsunami (A flashback to the present)

I was out hunting for my meal, swimming deep into the darker waters, searching for the tasty globe fish. A fish with spines, that when it puffs up, the spines stick out in every direction when it is attacked. It has a poison on it's spines and body that is harmful to humans if they eat it or get punctures in their skin, but not to me, nor my kind, not that I have seen others of my kind in four eights of the turns or the seasons. As far as I knew I, Kelp,  was the last living elf on this world with two moons. All I can remember of other elves is I was part of a group of them searching for a new home, fleeing the encroaching humans who plague this world. Who hunt and slaughter we elves. But I was lucky, if you call being the last elf alive lucky, to have used my magic to hide deep in the dark waters from them. Humans cannot swim as deep as I can, nor can they breathe underwater like I can, either. Though it was not my intention to hide, but to fight them as they attacked our group while we were searching for our new home. I fought and was struck on the back of my head by a human, was thrown overboard, their thinking being I would drown while I was unconscious. The cooler water reviving me enough to instinctively dive deep, to sink to the bottom of the cove where we had moored our boats. So I sank deep, as deep as I was now searching for the  globe fish, my coral shaped spear in hand, ready to strike swift to catch my prey. I was having no luck today, the fish all seemed to have fled the area sensing something, some dread, a danger, I had not.

That is when I felt the currents change, pulling me down and out into the vast deep water. I had seen this before, a Great Wave was coming. I gathered my strength and swam with the current trying to gain enough distance from the shore, so the great wave would not carry me up over the beach and rocks, far inland. The land held a danger too, Humans. I swam till my limbs ached and I was short of air, my ear gills working as best they could to bring life giving oxygen back to my body. The current slowed and started to shift back towards the shore. I grabbed hold of the coral heads around me and used my magic to shape a cage out of the living coral to hold me in place. I braced myself as the surge of water moved over and around me

Surge! A face, and a feeling of strong currents came to mind unbidden, a lost memory returning, only to leave just as fast as it had come. I had little time to ponder this memory, it was fading fast, and I needed to move on after the following great waves passed me, before the water became fouled from the debris and silt dragged back out to sea by the retreating waves off the land. I shaped my quickly made cage open with a touch of my hand and a flicker of thought. I swam again as far out to sea as I could.

Many days passed with me traveling parallel to the coastal devastation, and hunger pursued me. I fed little and only upon the sea weeds I knew and the fish that were dead from having their gills choked with dirt from the land. The fish were not healthy to eat and I suffered with pain in my guts.

I eventually came to the end of the devastation, and once again into clean clear waters, teeming with fish and other abundant sea life. I built myself a small hidey home out of the corals and regained my strength, hunting often and feeding well. I spent many a face changes of the mother moon there in my solitary survival.  Then the flat headed Sharp Tooths (hammer head sharks) arrived to mate and give live birth to their hungry pups. Ravenous they were, yet I was able to flee from them heading down the coast once more. I was in no hurry to settle down again as I was filled with a wanderlust, a need to seek out what I did not know. Destiny perhaps? My end and a release of my soul?

I would stop and stay in a place for a Moon or two and then move on having become restless again. As I traveled the water grew warmer and the sea denizens changed to adapt to it. Then one day I saw them. The boats scattered upon the ocean's surface. "HUMANS!" Or so I thought. I put myself between the Mother Moon and the boats so I would be hidden in the Mother Moon's glare off the water. I slowly and cautiously rose to the surface, poking my head above water for the first time in many eights of the turns of the seasons. My pupils slitted against the stronger light, slitted like a cat. My skin growing darker to help me hide in the water my wavy stripes darkening also and shifting in position on my back without an active thought to do so.

I peered at the boats and saw shapes there. Human like shapes though more slender and some shorter than the humans I had seen and remembered.  I heard voices. Elfin voices raised in fear and pain and loss. I tread water, in a shock different than theirs but none the less profound. Who were they? Where did the come from? Are they a danger to me? Should I go help them? Should I escape while I could? I closed my mind up to prevent any accidental sending of surprise, but I may have been too late. I think I see one of them sitting in a boat turn to look in my direction. I immediately submerge, waiting to see what they will do next.