Picture 2
Kimberly Gould’s Picture Choice: 2
Title: Survivor
Her grandmother had walked on land. She had worked to excavate the surface and open more ocean. Lily swam easily through the light blue water near the surface with long gliding strokes. She didn’t surface for air, but breathed normally. She had chosen to follow her grandmother, Pita, into the water, as had a third of the human population on Weedo. That wasn’t really what the planet was called. It was a whistle followed by a low click, but the humans on the surface called it that.
Lily’s thick throat included an installation, a small plankton engineered to separate dissolved oxygen from the water. She didn’t have to surface, ever, and had only walked on two legs a handful of times. She liked to sit near the beach, watching her remaining human relatives dig at the shore. They were earning their way off Weedo, but Lily couldn’t imagine leaving.
“Lily! Lily!”
She turned from her perch on a rope of algae to her foster-sister, Jean. It was a play on jaune, or yellow. Pita had taken to naming her piscan friends after their colour. The amorphous creature was preceded by a flood of whistles and clicks.
“Mother is looking for you. We need your hands.”
Lily looked at her digits, so less agile than Jean’s many tentacles. Their thick ones were as strong as her arms. Why would they need her hand?
“Coming,” she said, pushing off and gliding toward her sister, toward home.
Author Note: I’m working on a novel, Pita’s story, and the picture made me think of it.
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Kimberly Gould is the author of Cargon: Honour and Privilege, and it's sequel Duty and Sacrifice. She can be found most places as Kimmydonn, including Kimmydonn.com
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