Copyright J.B. Norman
“Beware the Phosphorescent Squaliform Thanatobeast, my son!” the old fisherman perched on the wharf cries as Kat passes by.
“I, uh, I’m a girl,” Kat mutters — normally, she’s usually sensitive about called a dude, but the old man looks to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2700 years old, so she’s willing to cut him a bit of slack.
The old man coughs awkwardly. “My eyesight isn’t great anymore. But, my advice is still good: Beware the Phosphorescent Squaliform Thanatobeast, my s— child…”
“Uh huh,” Kat says sceptically.
“No, seriously,” the old man says. “That Phosphorescent Squaliform Thanatobeast is the one of the most vicious creatures in the Powers’ blue sea. Why, it’s five hundred leagues long from snout to tail.”
“Uh huh,” Kat says sceptically.
The old man shrugs. “Well, not really. But it is big.”
“And you’ve seen this, um…” Kat realises she wasn’t paying attention to its name. “… thing?”
“Oh,” the old man says, nodding eagerly. “Hard not to. Why, so phosphorescent is the Phosphorescent Squaliform Thanatobeast that the whole sea seems to light up with its glow when it nears. Actually, it’s quite a lovely shade of purplish-red. The very same shade of my sitting room.”
“Uh huh,” Kat says sceptically.
“There is but one way to overcome the Phosphorescent Squaliform Thanatobeast,” the old man continues.
“Let me guess,” Kat offers. “Magic sword? Magic arrow? Magic something right?”
“Oh no, my s— child,” the old man says. “The one and only once and future means to overcome and vanquish the Phosphorescent Squaliform Thanatobeast is to…”
He pauses. Kat isn’t sure if it’s for dramatic effect, because he’s running out of breath or maybe starting to drift off to sleep.
“Yeah?” Kat urges.
“… give it a mighty wallop right in the nose!” the old man concludes.
“You just said it was miles and miles long!” Kat protests. “What is a person punching it going to do?”
“Ask me not why the knowledge of the ancients makes such a proclamation as this, my s— child,” the old man says.
Kat sighs. “You don’t actually know, do you?”
The old man coughs awkwardly again.
“…No,” he murmurs.
Kat sighs. “Uh huh.”
“Oh,” the old man says suddenly, reaching for his fishing pole. “I’m getting a bite.”
“No, you’re not,” Kat notes.
The old man turns away from Kat. “Oh my,” he says. “This certainly requires all my attention.”
As Kat continues along the pier, she sees Dunstana come dashing down the gangplank of her ship as it docks.
“Kat!” Dunstana says, running eagerly towards her sister. “You’re never going to believe this! First, the water started glowing, like, purple and everything. Then this big, huge shark-looking thing pops up out of the water! And was, like, eight million miles long — well, not actually, but it was big! Also, there was this seagull that was flying by and it landed on the big, glowy shark’s nose and it did not like that at all! It started running away right away!”
“Told you so,” the old man calls over his shoulder.
I’m not happy with the execution of this one, because I think it neither needs to to longer or shorter than 500 to work better. I do like the idea that the Crazy Old Man‘s tall tale ends up being real, but it’s going to need reworking for a proper story.
Still, it turned out all right, given that I managed to bang out 500 words pretty quickly working from the line “Beware the Phosphorescent Squaliform Thanatobeast, my son…”
“Beware the [thing], my son” is a line from Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky, where the [thing] in question is the Jabberwock itself. Now, I’m not actually sure if I remembered that specifically, or just that “Beware the [thing], my son” is a line from some poem somewhere.
Squaliform Thanatobeast is kinda-sorta a reference to Thanatos, one of the Ancient, Evil Shark Gods I alluded to in my recommendation of Endless Ocean — squaliform is an order of sharks (though not including Great Whites, which is what Thanatos is), thanatos is the Greek word for and god of Death. The reference isn’t the important part, I just wanted something that kinda fit the tone of the original source of the “Beware the [thing], my son” line.
Phosphorescent isn’t really a reference to anything. I just think glowy things are cool…
Also, I know I said the glow in question was purplish-red, which that header image isn’t, but I can’t always be as precise as I’d like to be when dealing with free stock photos.
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