I was enjoying my feeding frenzy consisting mainly of corals and the occasional fish that got too close. When the sky above me began to be noticeably darker.I looked around and concluded that it came because it was getting late and because I was deeper under the surface.

I decided to go back to my little cave and get a new plan for the next day.

I moved along my path of small scale destruction I had caused. I looked at the corals that were missing bits and pieces. Some had perfect symmetrical tree-like structures but now had only half left. Another that looked like a brain had just half missing. Also gone because of me.

While observing everything I saw a small white jittery fish. That fish had no eyes for some reason. It was near a cave entrance.

‘I think I heard of blind fishes before. They use the movements of the surrounding water to orient themselves and bounce their own movement off the walls. Echo location but using water waves instead of sound. Might be nice to have if I ever plan to go deeper than the twilight zone¹That spot in the depths that during day time seems like evening. About 200 to 1000 Meters in depth in our world.. Should I even want that? I know all the memes about Nasa knowing what is beneath and wanting to escape because of it. Well what nightmares could I potentially get from that? Back to my prey…’

I tilted my head in surprise. ‘Where did it go? Into the cave?’

I moved to the cave entrance and slowly went inside. I carefully felt out with my tentacles what direction the cave system went to and moved to what I hoped to be my prey.

‘Octosquids are really built to move through places like this. I hope I will be able to find my way out of here.’

The cave branched out into a downwards direction and to the right. I moved my tentacles to both directions to feel out what I should be expecting. The right side ended after a short turn but I did feel some water movement in that direction and downwards just continued beyond my reach. I moved to the right side a bit and left one tentacle in the downwards chute to make sure nothing would be going past me.

The other three tentacles were feeling out the right side and found something that moved away from my tentacles. I moved my tentacles around until I could grab it. I could not put my eyes in a position I could see inside the dead end with. Touch was the only thing I could use, so I did.

Tentacle one up. It moved to the left, tentacle two to the left. It moved down to the floor, ‘or did it go across?’ Let's move tentacle three to the left and see if I can get it in a corner. It moved past my tentacles like the slippery fish it was.

‘I think I should use this as a mind exercise for how to coordinate my tentacles, left, up, back, right, down, right. Did I get you? nope slipped past. Arrggg, Just be my food already!’

Some not identifiable amount of time later. I will never admit how long it took to finally catch the little bugger. I concluded that it was indeed the fish I wanted to get. I quickly devoured it, not giving it any chance to run away and starting the whole process over again.

    Water based echolocation DNA collected:

        Touch cells attuned to water movement (Semi-clashing, beneficial, 1.640 BM)

        Brain structure to make sense of the signals (Non-clashing, beneficial, 643 BM)

‘Thanks, I think what will be mighty useful. I hope I will not be disappointed. That is a flag ain’t it?’

I started to move out of this cave system to move back to my home. At the entrance I truly realized how long that fish took me, the sun was already below the horizon.

‘To stay or to move back? That is the question… Staying makes me stay in an unfamiliar cave, moving back means I need to follow my trail of destruction back to my home… The fish I hunted was blind, completely adapted to cave life. It came from this cave so that path downwards must lead to its natural habitat. I do not want to know if that habitat has predators at this moment, where I could get stuck between a rock and a hard place. Time to move to my home.’

Slowly I moved, past all the destruction I had caused. The normal reef life was already sleeping and from the depths other creatures were coming up to spend the night here where I assume it was safer to stay. The big school of carnivorous fish, dark blue like the depths they came from, was already near my cave. I saw a few rays, from 5 S1O to about 10 S1O, and even more sharks and different types of other bigger fish. Seems like no-one wanted to start a fight at the reef. Likely you are the one to end up dead and other fish that joined the fight later will end up with the benefit of your struggles.

I was brown like the seafloor that I moved above. Not the corals however. The rays however did not seem to care one bit. I swiftly moved past the ray group into a neutral zone. The brown eels type fish in the zone after that did see me as some food.

One eel with a length of 6 S1O swam down fast in an attempt to eat me. I had a bit of luck however, their species was very competitive. Three more eels followed after and they started a bit of infighting while still getting ever closer to me. I moved to a nearby sand ditch. I was not sure if I could make it. I Used all my power and swam as fast as I could.

The eels drew ever closer, so close in fact that the first one began snapping at my tentacles. The second eel did not like that and snapped at the first eel. They got in a bit of a snapping fight with one another. This made room for the third to actually bite me.

‘Auwy auwy, I am sorry, let me live. I ever meant to piss you off.’

The fourth saved me by biting at me and number three. Three let go to retaliate. I was only a small distance away from the sand bank to try the sand hiding trick again. The fourth bit into me again. The first and second came back to my rescue and both attacked number four. It let me go and I finished the last dash to the sandbank.

I dipped into the sandbank and threw up a storm of sand to disorient the four eels. I settled in to the left at the edge. I had thrown some sand on me to help my camouflage. I was not sure if they would fall for it. Lucky they did. They all moved out and missed me. They started a fight after that. I assume they blame one another for the loss of food.

‘I will wait until they are done with their disagreement and have left until moving to my house again.’

Having no clue what eel had what number I began counting again from one. The first eel had some problems, namely an assault by the other three eels. Eel one got pushed to the seafloor a small distance away from me and acquired quite some wounds.

A few minutes later that seemed way longer they all left. They had only given one another bite wounds and scratches. No part was left behind for me to take the DNA from.

I continued my journey back home.

CosmicDragon

I have a dilemma.
I have ideas for more stories but I know that I will most likely not finish what I had started previously.
Should I start more stories to get more things out there? Or try and stick to one story and potentially lose motivation?