With a narrow splash, Tua darted overboard and down into the water. His quills lay flat to his spine, and also did he pull in his arms so they were against his waist. It was his tail that thrust mighty sweeps that propelled him ripping through the waves. It was a motion that came naturally to him and all of his kind, inherited from his fathers before him, and their fathers before them.

Ahead, a mass of silvered fish raged tightly against another, forming an ever twisting shape of scales and fins. They were closely followed by fish of much larger size, known to the Tsaagan as 'tuana'. Their massive bodies mottled in blue and grey, with razored fins lining the dorsal ridge of their back. Tuas familiarity with the tuana reached deep, for it was the creature he was named after, and the target of his inaugural hunt when he was still young in the ways of the hunt. He recalled his first kill of the beast, fought with tooth and claw alone as was tradition, and from its corpse he wrenched a tooth that he even now wore on his collar.

The tuana lunged erratically at the shoal and devoured what fish did not swim away in time. These silver fish swarmed so tightly in they could not be seen through, thus forming a partition between Tua and his prey. Indeed, the mass was both the target and the blind spot, and here is where Tua would conceal his advantage. He swam forward, pressuring the swirling shoal but not to advance any further so that he would trigger their scattering.

Decision and deliberation was clear in his movements. Not once did he glance at the other prey. His eyes were fixed on a tuana of immense size as it circled and faded behind the silver fish. Not once did he turn his head- he had made up his mind.

And then, with explosive force, the tuana burst forward through the shoal with jaws gaping. Again, the fish flung themselves out and away, but in doing so revealed Tua, who threw himself with such force the tuana stunned sideways momentarily. In the next moment, in a rush of voracity, he was upon the fish and snapping wildly.

Tua had lived his life out in the shallows and had hunted many tuana in earnest, and he was well practiced to its behaviour, and to him this hunt was no different. With frantic motions the streamlined form of the fish swung in circles in attempt to dislodge the Tsaagan, yet Tua held strong to its side with claws sinking deeply into its flesh. With calculated lunges, half a dozen times his teeth sank into its scales, shearing them off to scatter brilliantly into the water. Tua's wrath was terrible, his predatory nature raging forth unbound by the logic of his thinking mind. Again and again he struck, each fueling the fervor that bore the next. Blood and salt filled his mouth, escalating his assault to a fever-pitch.

But here in his violence, Tua overlooked the positioning of his limbs or the angle of his tail, and among the wild flailing his ankle came loose and was seized by the tuana. Its teeth were like spears, driving deep through the Tsaagan's foot and spilled clouds of his own blood into the waters. Reflexively, and without thought, Tua loosed a great roar of bubbles that billowed out from between his lips and teeth still hooked in flesh. The occasional rips from the razored fins that had gone before was as nothing compared with the pain he now received. He pulled at the jaws, and wrenched his foot in attempt to set it free, but it only served to sink those serrated fangs deeper. All at once, his hunt had changed from a thing he willingly entered to one he could not escape, and the tuana counted on this.

With renewed vigor, Tua tore at the flesh of the fish so that it was torn to red ribbons that loosely floated in the waves. For each champ the tuana delivered to his limb, Tua returned twice more. It was a whirl of fangs and claws, throwing blood and teeth and bubbles up to the surface.

Where the creatures of the ocean could fill their lungs with water, Tua's own breath was finite, as demonstrated by the burning in his chest and fading of his vision. But as he faded, so too did his prey. Its thrashing was weakened to a limp shivering, but its jaws remained clamped as though grasping on to its last connection to the living as it was taken through its death throes.

Tua only faintly noted the figure of another Tssagan against the light from above them, yet even through his exhaustion he knew it to be Teya. He felt the thud of some fishing spear impact the side of his quarry, and saw a fresh burst of blood pour from the creature's head. Only then did he feel the grip loosen and release, and could he wearily retreat his foot from its teeth.

He powered his tail with what vigor he still had up to the surface, and then felt the delicate hands of his brother catch under his arm and also pull him up. The taste of the air was so sweet on his tongue that no other mouthful could ever compare. Quickly, the dark edges of his vision retreated, and his senses again flared forth and awake. Through his second eyelids he could see the distraught face and flared quills of Teya who pulled him to the bow of their canoe and up and over into the deck.

As Tua lay on his back the pain in his foot, now free of those teeth, had quickly subsided to a dull throb. It did not bother him much. But the pain was replaced by the pang of guilt in his heart as he looked back into the eyes of Teya, so full of fear and distress that it manifested itself on his quivering lip and needy grip of his hands. He fussed his sights on each weeping cut and scrape that covered Tua's body. He lifted Tua's snout up to his and brushed frills, and the touch reassured him.

Teya gazed into his brother's eyes and knew Tua divined nothing of what he felt. That the twisted feelings of brotherhood and love so wistfully and hopelessly could slip away from him should Tua ever be torn through the ragged teeth of death. Teya's arms all but reached out to him and around the Tsaagan, in the ways the mere nearness to him set his mind tumbling. So agonizing did his heart feel that he wished Tua never again would hunt out at sea, nor bear another scar, nor feel the grip of life fade from him for even a moment.

And then, as though Tua heard through the tumultuous fervor of his thoughts, Teya was pulled lovingly and immensely into this brother's tight embrace, and for a few sweet moments Teya seemed as though they had left the corporeal world and slipped into a dream world of delight and duality. With it, all thoughts that were frayed and erratic came back to him in that instant, and he simply delighted in the moment and let his worries pass onward and outward onto the distant waves.