The little male seal noticed the way the beta males lurked restlessly on the shore, watching with their pink cocks erect. Frustrated maybe, but maybe not. They whittled away their time and arousal mounting one another ferociously, then feeding ravenously, while the alphas slowly wasted away, unable to eat, trapped into protecting their territories and roughly servicing their barking harems, who lolled together, laughing, bruised but content, in a mess of sperm and shit and milk and pups.

He barked to a fellow beta-half-pup drifter, and so told him: The life of a beta doesn’t look so bad to me.

The fellow drifter agreed by butting against the small male seal playfully.

The male seal’s cock stirred. Maybe he would mount this fellow drifter one day. Maybe the drifter would mount him. Maybe one day he would be big enough to be alpha and mount his friend and all her harem. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t care; maybe he wouldn’t even want to. Maybe he would.

He thought about how she smelt. He missed romping and hunting with her already.

He takes the alpha’s warning seriously, and leaves him to enjoy the fuzzy bed of rock.

He dives deep and listens for a while to the clicking of the fish, the chirruping of dolphins and, curling up on currents from the depths, the whisper of whale song. He watches drifting beams of sunlight taper out into the swaying green expanse above him and, from somewhere far away, he hears the vibrations of boats, their whirring motors and rustling nets. He resurfaces, swims as fast as he can for a bit, then floats, dozing.

He romps for a bit with another beta-half-pup. They roll in the tickling turbulence of the swell as it hits the shallow rock ledges that jut out below the cliffs, and bark at one another, laughing. They herd a school of whiting into a bustling ball and feint and dodge out of the paths of diving gannets and shearwaters, who help them round up the fish from above. They gorge themselves on the fish’s crunchy little bodies, then drift, dozing, on the surface, holding their flippers up to the sun. When he wakes, the other beta-half-pup is nowhere to be seen or heard.

He swims some more, dives deep and shoots back up to the surface for air. He dives again and rushes at the surface, this time trying to breach it just to see if he can, like he and his friend used to do when they were half-pups. He manages to launch his head, his shoulders and some of his body up and out, but not his tail. He’s getting bigger and heavier every day. He drifts for a while with his flippers in the air, floating hungrily, but he is too lazy to hunt just yet.