FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Little sister worked exceedingly hard in the next several days. The extra salt of the water required a deep change in every cell of the body and the addition of a couple extra organs to the expansive midsection. But also, the fat straddling her body rendered diving extremely difficult to begin with. Leviathan's claws were next on the list to adapt, after she was no longer at risk of dehydration. The stumpy pillars did little good kicking in the water. Little sister made them webbed and then one day after she had seen a number of sea creatures swimming about at a distance, they became large flippers instead. Leviathan was not so concerned that such limbs would have been utterly useless on land. She made much better speed in the water than she had on land in recent years. The tail too was employed for locomotion, it became tapered near the dorsal and ventral regions, making a great, long paddle so Leviathan was able to move with ease in the water after a relatively short time.

During those early days and weeks, Leviathan saw a great many new things, especially after little sister decreased their natural buoyancy and they were able to travel beneath the waves. Leviathan moved slowly in the green, well lit depths, relying again on her skin for precious oxygen. The old nictitating membranes Leviathan had used to clean her eyes protected them at first, but then little sister changed the eyes themselves and the cloudy film was no longer needed. Down here, vision was alternately crystal clear and completely useless, especially when Leviathan mistakenly churned the silt settled at the bottom.

There were new aquatic designs in abundance, but Leviathan tasted very few of the morsels beacuse the agility of the creatures below the water was, if anything, even greater than that of the land dwellers. Leviathan did taste part of a colorful landscape she came across which was filled with swarms of fish. To her surprise, she found that the rocky substance itself was an animal, or several animals acting in concert. Little sister let her know of this discovery as Leviathan had only been trying to steal some fish while they hid in their burrows in the colorful, calcium stone; she did get a few that way, though.

Leviathan, as she meandered in the warm waters near the coast, did spy larger creatures in the distance, but all stayed well away and to chase seemed hopeless, but she observed them nonetheless. 'Some of those animals are much larger than even the bull elephants, but I am still far larger than any I have seen so far.' said Leviathan to her other half, more in idleness than anything else.

'We are very large, big sister. I have needed to make many original changes to ourself to remain strong and viable. Even secrets I find in the DNA of the prey we find have not yielded solutions for even larger stature.' said the tail matter of factly as usual.

'But we cannot grow yet, nay, we diminish as we use our precious fat stores to survive still. It has been now 5 moons since leaving the land and I have had but a fraction to eat as I was used to.' complained the head.

'I don't count time by the vague passing of the lights in the sky any longer, big sister, but in the number of beats of our heart. Though we are indeed starving, that I cannot deny. But the task of finding a new food source must be up to you. I know so little of the outside world now, I am not sure I could even derive meaning from the signals from the eyes or ears anymore.' said the tail. Little sister was being a little dramatic in the head's opinion.

'Well, I have done my best to find food. Eating the growing rock will prove too poor a fare, even if there are a few fish hiding within. Why don't you make for us gills on the sides of our neck so that I may have more oxygen and swifter movement?' said the head harshly.

'I can make for us gills, big sister, but the energy needed for swifter movement will increase the drain on our reserves.'

The head baulked at the prospect of loosing yet more of her cherished flesh. But she saw no other options. 'Do it, for I must find out what the other large creatures of these water do for food. Maybe they will lead us to a new bountiful source of biomass.'

Little sister assented to the head's demands and within two rotations, slits opened in the sides of the neck of the flippered beast and water passed freely through the mouth as they moved, invigorating the massive muscles. And so Leviathan swam into deeper waters.

Leviathan found that the deeper she dived, the colder the water became and the less sunlight filtered through the depths above. It was a still, silent place for the most part and largely devoid of obvious signs of life. Leviathan soon missed even the coral to swallow roughly into her empty gullet. 'The waters go on forever...' Thought Leviathan abysmally. It had been two days since she had detected another creature of any appreciable size.

'We have time to explore. Our reserves are well enough for 10.5 million heart beats... about a planetary cycle, if I recall.' said the tail.

'That's what I am worried about, little sister. What if there is no food source here to sustain us? We shall come back to land emaciated and I shall be in pain for the loss and still we shall have the same problem, even if our lost biomass makes tree eating again viable.'

'Fear not, big sister, I am working on a contingency plan.' said the tail, beaming in her own brilliance.

'What plan is that?' asked the head, curious about little sister's processes for once.

'I'll share it with you when I've thought about it some more. I have more experiments to run inside our body.'

The head gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. 'Don't be too wasteful with our energy supply. I need it to move us through this vast water.'

The tail did not bother to reply, but gave the impression of good natured humor. Leviathan returned to hunting for where the large mammals migrated.

In time she found them, mostly by following pods of smaller, faster moving mammals who seemed to communicate with each other by series of rapid clicks and whistles. The big ones moved across even larger areas, from where the waters were warm and the sun was bright far towards the planet's pole where it grew extremely cold. The big creatures, despite their size had little to fear from leviathan, who could not change direction fast enough to win any sort of encounter, but the titan's raw propulsive ability was enough so that they could not entirely lose her either. Leviathan's fins and tail worked constantly, waving slowly, but unceasingly in the water. The giant did not experiment with sleeping again for a long time.

'Perhaps we should streamline ourselves as the finned mammals have. We may become fast enough to catch one.' thought Leviathan as she watched the tails of the whales in the distance and her belly ached with hunger.

'We can.' said little sister, 'But I sense doubt in your mind.'

'Even so, little sister. These whales are large, but not plentiful. I think I would eat through the supply of them much faster than they reproduce.'

'How are they feeding themselves then?' asked the tail.

'The toothed ones hunt, either in the deep dark or upon smaller sea mammals. I might be able to do likewise, but I am so much larger than they, I fear I would be clumsy at it. But the largest ones do not do this. I have not yet figured out how they feed. They seem only to want to migrate further north so that the water freezes me even now as I swim.'

'I can fix that. I will not let our body freeze. Wander the world as you may, I will keep us alive.'

'I'm thankful for that, little sister.' said the head, feeling a rare moment of gratitude for her second brain. And doggedly, she chased the tails of the great whales ahead.

At last, they seemed to reach their destination. The group of whales met other groups and they dissolved and intermingled, though all kept their distance from Leviathan herself. However, Leviathan soon lost interest in the whales entirely, as soon as she saw what they had come here for.

The swarm was like a massive pink cloud floating near the surface of the water in the cold green sea. It was composed of billions of tiny, shrimp-like creatures and the whales would open wide their mouths, like great sacs and swallow thousands in one gulp, filtering out the water with bristles in their mouths. Leviathan told little sister how they could now feed themselves on this new, dense food source and quickly the cells in her jaws, face and neck began to comply.