A whale must have died, I thought, as the snowfall thickened.

When a whale dies it snows heavier down here. In this dark, cold, silent village of ours, the death of a whale descends as an ode to life. With my gills stretched wide and a rich, green glow shining from the lure sticking out of my forehead, I drifted through the blizzard quivering with delight.

It’s not a whale. It tastes musty. My mate conveyed a thought.

Recently my mate’s intellect had been deteriorating fast. Since his lips morphed into a sucker and his eyes and part of his brain melted as they fused with my body, he can’t speak at all, and conveys no more than occasional fragments of thought. Now that even his bloodstream is connected to mine, he is no more than an extra organ that dangles from my body. It may be the fruition of a love I’d always dreamt of, a life where body and mind have become one, but now and then I think that this marriage is nothing more than the trace of a past love.

My love, I don’t think it’s a whale . . .

A whale carcass may be eaten to shreds by the fish in the villages above ours as it swells with decay, but the plump and tender flesh, that chewy fin and burning hot blood, those supple eyes and slightly bitter gills all end up drifting down here to us in the deep sea. The death of a whale provides abundant sustenance for the whole village for months on end, and even after all the flesh is eaten away, delicious zombie worms grow big and breed as they stick fast to the thick bones and suck out all the fat, and so we get to eat them, too.

My love, my babbler who never stops chatting away, I’m telling you it’s not a whale . . .

Paying no mind to my mate’s thoughts, I swam toward the valley of gods. The valley appeared a few years ago, when a submarine volcano erupted. Tube worms and crabs and shrimp bloomed like coral in the scalding boil around the hydrothermal vent. There was a brief time of plenty in which a radiant culture flourished, then it quietly met its end as the volcano cooled. But our village is still centered around it because some warmth remains, making it a pleasant place to be, and it continues to provide sustenance, with the remaining corpses and all the bugs that fed on them.

When I got to the valley, friends were gathered together merrily dancing. Most of the time we live our lives keeping a distance. That’s the only option in such a poor neighborhood where food is so scarce; we would end up snatching morsels from each other’s mouths otherwise. Moving around squanders energy, so our usual routines consist only of floating, with our bodies entrusted to the ocean current, and opening our mouths to swallow the small and hungry things that approach thinking the lure light pulsing by our mouths must be something to eat. Yet we can’t help but gather to celebrate when a blizzard like this is raging.

Needleteeth Anglerfish 312 approached with two mates dangling from her. One of her mates still had his brain and so could converse, but with his face completely buried in her body, all the other one could do now was produce sperm.

“Illuminated Netdevil 1029, according to my mate, it’s not a whale.”

Glaring with big, bulging eyes, Needleteeth crackled the countless long, sharp teeth that encased her upper and lower jaw. All of us have big eyes that can see in the pitch dark, and sharp teeth like a snare that make sure no prey can escape once they’ve entered our mouths, but the Needleteeths’ teeth are a little extreme. They grow so big that, as they age, it gets hard for them to move their mouths because they impale themselves with their own teeth.

I spoke, pulsing my lure, “My mate says the same. True enough, if it were a whale now’s about the time we’d be seeing the body.”

“Let’s wait and see. The explorers will bring news by evening.”

These “explorers” are lanternfish. They are one of the courageous clans that put their lives on the line every day to make a round trip from this deep sea to the Surface, the horizon of our knowledge. The Surface is a place where all kinds of unnamed monsters appear. But even when it costs them the lives of their precious young, the lanternfish do not stop making their daily trips up there. Apparently the food at the Surface tastes better than anything down here, and besides, having seen the amazing view they encounter when they leap above the water once, they just have to keep going back. They say that the beyond is dazzling white, resplendent and brighter and more brilliant than every light in this deep sea combined.

Needleteeth makes fun of them, saying it’s just a hallucination caused by lack of oxygen and the low pressure… but there’s another story even harder to believe: the theory that beyond that “beyond the Surface” there is yet another horizon of knowledge which is “beyond the clouds,” and beyond that again there is a world that is as cold and quiet and dark as this deep sea… but I just can’t get my head around it.

“The wind never ceases.” A dim light glittered from down below.

It was Fanfin Anglerfish 042. She’s never once moved from the sandy seabed since she was born. Dozens of long, beautiful, and soft threads stick out from Fanfin, extending ten times longer than her body. The threads, sensitive as erogenous zones, excitedly capture the subtlest changes in the direction of ocean current and temperature. They say that when she was in her prime, Fanfin could perceive the movement of the entire ocean, but these days, perhaps a little senile in her old age, she keeps saying strange things.

“Yes, friend, that’s how it’s always been,” Needleteeth replied softly.

As far as we know, what moves above the water flows like a current too. From north to south, from south to north, from cold to hot, from hot to cold.

“The wind never ceases. From one end of the world to the other, it keeps blowing, always. It should have stopped long ago… when the days got hot. The wind has gone insane in the heat.”

“Fanfin’s mind isn’t what it was,” Needleteeth whispered, keeping their lights close so Fanfin wouldn’t see. In this silent world we usually converse with the shape and intervals of the pulsing light of our lures. “I’ve been telling her for ages to keep moving around a little, even if it’s hard.”

“It’ll be because of that bad stuff that settled on the floor,” I said.

At some point, a substance other than snow started piling up in this village. Little things that never decay, that even the zombie worms vomit up. They have no nutritional value and can’t be digested, and no matter how the waves break them up they only become smaller, never disappearing. The very young swallow them, mistaking them for snow, then can’t regurgitate or excrete them, and their tummies swell until they explode, killing them. Now, some babies are even born with that stuff embedded in them.

“Those poor things must have eaten too much of the bad stuff.”

Fanfin had been saying strange things for a while: the sea has gotten blander (what could she mean by blander?), it has gotten bigger, heavier, hotter… ah, but the hotter part is true. The rest of us can feel that much for ourselves. It’s even said that an ice continent that had stood firm somewhere for millennia has melted to nothing.

“Hey kids, the snow isn’t just falling here,” Siphonophore said, emitting a soft and elegant light with their whole body as they passed between us.

Siphonophore’s name is simply Siphonophore, no numbers. Because, within the bounds of where we swim at least, there’s only one. Siphonophore lives forever, reproducing her body like a plant. She may have been alive for a thousand years, or ten thousand, even; there is no fish who knows. Siphonophore’s body is as big as a whale. And like whales, Siphonophore converses with a low frequency, and that low voice can travel halfway around the earth and cover the entire ocean like whales’ voices do. And so, like the whales, Siphonophore knows all that is happening in the ocean. If there’s a difference, it’s that Siphonophore knows not only what’s going on far in the distance, but also all that happened far back in time.

Although she’s lived for so long, she has no strength to harm others, so if anyone resolved to eat her, Siphonophore would die in an instant. But none of us down here in the deep sea would ever think of doing that. That would mean eating up the history of the ocean. It would be the same as chewing up the record of our entire world.

“It’s not only snowing in our village. They say heavy snow is falling in that next village, and the village out front, and the village out back, and the village behind that, and that very distant village too, all just the same…”

“In that case, it must be a mass death,” Needleteeth said, in a pulsing glow, “at the very least a large clan has met its end. Maybe a whole species. And the remains have become this snow falling now.”

That reminded me of a story the explorer lanternfish had told a couple of months ago.

“…that’s right, they all died. Those sardines that had lived, millions of them, together in one group. We greeted them every morning for years and years and had grown quite fond of them… What a horrific scene it was… As you know, the water has been slowly heating up these days, the fish catchers have gotten fiercer too. More and more of the sardines were getting sick, and they say it was the death of a few of the elders that was the start of it. According to a sardine that saw one up close, they were totally boiled from the inside. Those elders had pointed the way for the whole group. Dozens of their followers got so sad that they died not long after them. And then their children and families died in turn… Sadness swept through the clan like a disease, like a tidal wave, and within a few days they all died together. In just a few days, that honorable clan, that had continued for centuries… The rotting stench of it meant it was impossible to breathe in that whole area. Parasites ran rampant, and then they died all at once, too…”

Thinking of what I’d heard again, I gave a shudder. That’s how life goes. You do whatever you can to put up with things and endure, and it can seem like you’re managing, then there are times when, like a string pulled taught, something snaps and everything gives way in an instant. I hope they’re enjoying eternal life in fish heaven.

“Everything’s the same when it gets down to this deep sea,” I said in prayer.

Dimming her lure, Needleteeth bowed her head too. “Yes, all the same.”

“Be it venom or pathogen, sadness or pain, it’s all the same here. It all becomes beautiful snowflakes. Becomes merciful sustenance and the gift of life.”

“All apart from that stuff that doesn’t rot,” Needleteeth added bitterly.

“The wind never ceases,” Fanfin mumbled again, glittering inconspicuously down below.

“But how big a clan must have died for it to be snowing in every village around?” Needleteeth said, ignoring Fanfin.

“A species that big…” Siphonophore said passing in front of us again. “Well, as far as I know there’s only one…”

We faced each other.

“It couldn’t be. Humans?”

Siphonophore had talked about these humans for a long time. She told us about how, in the distant past, all kinds of gorgeous life had thrived above the Surface, just like in this ocean. But that over the last hundred years or so almost all of it had disappeared, and now only that bizarre species called humans teemed around up there.

“You mean those monsters that excrete the stuff that doesn’t rot?” Needleteeth said, grinding her teeth together just thinking of them.

Every day they create thousands of tons of poisonous matter that can’t be eaten and throw it into the ocean. The damage isn’t so bad here in the deep sea, but even just a little way above us terrible diseases run rampant one after another, and precious lives like coral disappear at a staggering rate. Rumor has it that they’re the ones to blame for the days getting hotter, too. It sounds absurd to me, but they say that something these humans belch out as they excrete the stuff that doesn’t rot makes the air burning hot…

To tell the truth, what shocked me most when I heard about these humans was something totally ridiculous.

“You’re telling me the females are smaller and weaker than the males?” I asked in disbelief, restlessly waggling the mate that dangled from my plump body.

My love, I’m dizzy…

“So the males of that species must be the ones to produce their young?”

All the organisms I meet here in this deep sea are female, of course. What’s the point in living with a bulky body if you aren’t going to make new life with it? A large body is a waste of nutrients if it isn’t going to reproduce.

“Ah, well, I suppose it’s not such a big deal if they can metamorphose their sex.”

I thought of a friend who had metamorphosed female a few years back after making up her mind to lay eggs. She said that, although becoming the main agent of reproduction and being responsible for a whole family was daunting, since she was already here living, rather than degenerating herself and becoming one of a mate’s organs, she wanted to try braving a life of her own and face whatever might come.

“Ah, adorable Netdevil. Land creatures don’t change sex, at least not most of them.”

I was astonished. “But there can’t always be an appropriate mate in the vicinity, surely. How on earth do they breed?”

“The natural world is a mysterious thing, Netdevil. Things don’t always work according to common sense.”

“The mass death of humans you say?” Needletheeth fluttered her gills looking at the snowfall that had grown even heavier. “I did think such a time had to come someday. Since the only thing left when all the other life on land had disappeared would be that inedible substance they made.”

“But they…how can I put it...they live on the ground, don’t they?” I stooped, tilting the lure sticking out of my forehead. “Even if they all died at once, that doesn’t necessarily mean they would become snow and fall all the way down here.”

“Then maybe it was mass suicide,” Needleteeth pondered. “Why, there was what happened to those white hairy things. Don’t you remember?”

That too was something that happened because of the heat. They say that land made of ice which had been there for tens of thousands of years all melted away. The creatures living there starved as the land got smaller and smaller and ended up all huddled together, reduced to skin and bones. Then one day, following their leader, they dived one after the other into the sea. Apparently it was a calm decision. That time, too, the snow was heavy down here for a long time.

There are times like that. When the string snaps. Times when endurance and struggling to survive, and even volition too, lose their purpose.

“It’s a typhoon!”

It was the school of lanternfish, rushing back from up there. Seen from a distance they look like one giant fish, and they really are like that in many ways.

“There’s a typhoon blowing (a typhoon) (a typhoon) (a typhoon).”

At the words of the elder that led at the very front, the young lanternfish following right behind all shook their tails together and repeated in a chorus.

Everyone dancing in the vicinity gathered around.

“But aren’t there always typhoons?” I asked, tilting to one side.

“No, not like this (not like this). The typhoon (the typhoon) is blowing from this end of the ocean (this end of the ocean) all the way to the opposite end (the opposite end).”

“The wind never ceases,” Fanfin sparkled, in rhyme with the lanternfish chorus.

“We’ve never seen a typhoon like it. It was as if a huge angry giant was raging around the whole world trampling everything in its path. The typhoon is so big, its head is towering way above the clouds. It’s pushing down cold air like a block of ice from up there in a whirling tornado. That wind is even colder than this deep sea, cold that freezes breath in its tracks. It’s a wind that freezes anything alive with just a touch. Everywhere it passes, all that’s left behind is corpses. The typhoon is twisting and sweeping up all the dead as it moves around and pouring them into the ocean. The death moves from ocean to ocean, only getting bigger. It doesn’t die down even after sweeping over the land and crossing seas. We managed to escape back down here somehow, but the things that live up there on the land are probably all…”

“Good grief.” As if she finally understood what Fanfin had been saying all along, Siphonophore looked down at her rustling threads. “The ocean must have gotten so hot that the evaporation doesn’t stop. In order for that thing called a typhoon to cease there needs to be a cold sea somewhere to cool the winds and calm it down, but now there’s nowhere cold left up there.”

“The string of the world has snapped,” I said.

“But the world held tight and endured for a long time. Honorably, and with such patience,” Needleteeth flicked her tailfin back and forth. “It’s a shame for those that live up there, but might the world not get a bit better now? If the monsters that covered the ground are all gone, might the little ones that die from eating the stuff that doesn’t rot, and the young that have their throats clogged with those things and die with their flesh festering not disappear now too?”

I turned downward, “Everything’s the same when it gets down to this deep sea.”

“All the same.”

We all dimmed our lights together and bowed. Me and Needleteeth and Siphonophore and the lanternfish too, and all the other anglerfish, even Fanfin down below, we all dimmed our lights. In the silence Needleteeth’s lovely companions, and mine too, prayed along with us.

“Be it venom or pathogen, sadness or pain, it’s all the same here. It all becomes beautiful snowflakes. Becomes merciful sustenance and the gift of life. Down here everything, all of it becomes the same.”

And we were silent. The snowfall thickened even more.