The great slope of its wideness was spread out before Ghost Bird, the edges wavery, blurred, sliding off into some other place. The mountain that was the biologist came up almost to the windowsill, so close she could have jumped down onto what served as its back. The suggestion of a flat, broad head plunging directly into torso. The suggestion, far to the east, already overshooting the lighthouse, of a vast curve and curl of the mouth, and the flanks carved by dark ridges like a whale’s, and the dried seaweed, the kelp, that clung there, and the overwhelming ocean smell that came with it. The green-and-white stars of barnacles on its back in the hundreds of miniature craters, of tidal pools from time spent motionless in deep water, time lost inside that enormous brain. The scars of conflict with other monsters pale and dull against the biologist’s skin.

It had many, many glowing eyes that were also like flowers or sea anemones spread open, the blossoming of many eyes—normal, parietal, and simple—all across its body, a living constellation ripped from the night sky. Her eyes. Ghost Bird’s eyes. Staring up at her in a vast and unblinking array.

As it smashed into the lower floor, seeking something.

As it sang and moaned and hollered.

Ghost Bird leaned out the window, reached out and pushed through the shimmering layer, so like breaking the surface of a tidal pool to touch what lay within … and her hands found purchase on that slick, thick skin, among all of those eyes, her eyes, staring up at her. She buried both hands there, felt the touch of thick, tough lashes, felt the curved, smooth surfaces and the rough, craggy ones. All of those eyes. In the multiplicity of that regard, Ghost Bird saw what they saw. She saw herself, standing there, looking down. She saw that the biologist now existed across locations and landscapes, those other horizons gathering in a blurred and rising wave. There passed between the two something wordless but deep. She understood the biologist in that moment, in a way she had not before, despite their shared memories. She might be stranded on a planet far from home. She might be observing an incarnation of herself she could not quite comprehend, and yet … there was connection, there was recognition.

Nothing monstrous existed here—only beauty, only the glory of good design, of intricate planning, from the lungs that allowed this creature to live on land or at sea, to the huge gill slits hinted at along the sides, shut tightly now, but which would open to breathe deeply of seawater when the biologist once again headed for the ocean. All of those eyes, all of those temporary tidal pools, the pockmarks and the ridges, the thick, sturdy quality of the skin. An animal, an organism that had never existed before or that might belong to an alien ecology. That could transition not just from land to water but from one remote place to another, with no need for a door in a border.