They sang in a chorus around her every day as she brought moss to her mouth with her tentacles. She was so used to their song that she paid it no attention. Sponges weren’t very smart. Once, when she’d tried to eat one on a sudden, curious whim, it had screamed with laughter as she’d tried to pull it from its pillar, as if she was tickling it. Keeper! it had cried. Games! Jokes! Fun! She’d given up, let it go, and returned to ignoring them.

Usually, after she ate, she scavenged for treasure in the murky pits beyond the coral mountains. Today, though, the creature didn’t need to scavenge, for the same currents that brought her food had brought a treasure. It was a little thing, a ball of metal, bobbing and tapping against the coral. Human-made, but not an object the creature recognized. Egg-shaped, with a tiny circle of metal at one end that was attached to some sort of pin. The circle and the pin were shiny, which was pleasing, though nowhere near as pleasing as the sparkly red jewel on the thumb of that diving human.

The creature picked the thing up and held it to her eyes. She caressed the metal circle, wondering if something happened when you pulled it, for sometimes human-made objects did things, if you touched them in the right place. One of her treasures was a box that opened and closed. Another had a chain wound around a cylinder, and a handle that made the whole thing turn; at the end of the chain was an anchor that thumped and dragged along the ocean floor when she played with it.

She would save pulling the metal circle as a treat for later. She carried the thing home and added it to her treasures.

—

It was nighttime when the creature woke to an unfamiliar perception. On the moonlit surface far above, the silbercows were crying out in their sleep.

Confused, she stretched her neck and swiveled her eyes. Overhead, lights flashed, thuds sounded, and suddenly, screams of silbercows stabbed at her mind. The screams galvanized her body, sharp and electrifying, the silbercows crying out in heartbreak, desperation, as had never happened before. The creature was so overwhelmed by the pain of the silbercows that she did something she’d never done. Rising to the surface, she lifted her eyes above the water.

Below a blanket of stars, humans in small boats were thrusting spears into silbercows.

The creature ducked below the surface again. What was this? No one ever killed silbercows! Hide, she thought to herself. Hide! Make it go away.

But as she tried to sink back down to her treasures, four silbercows, escaping, zoomed past her. They saw her, suspended in moonlit waters. They stared at her in amazement.

Pretend I’m not here, she begged them, trembling in every limb. Pretend you can’t see me.