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Is that distant fire still burning?
A fish thought.
In the faraway lands, is the fire still burning?
How many did it kill?
How many faceless ones, in that distant land, did a fire kill?
A fish in the waters thought.
While I swam along the Alaskan current, I thought of the burning coastlines that I left behind. I’ve heard of the place’s name from others, from the humans to the birds, from the birds to the fish: Oregon. A few thousand kilometers away, in Oregon, there is a forest fire. Some say the fire has burned for ten days now, and that the tips of the flames reached the sky, smoke drifting towards Canada. It is said that in the distant forest, wood cracks as flames slither upon it like bull kelp onto the pillars of piers. When the trees fall to the ground, embers splash beneath them, like icebergs falling from the edge of a glacier. But it is only above the water that things fall so rapidly, so tremendously.
Oh, what must that fire have felt like!
In a place where things fall so rapidly, it must be devastating to have a trunk fall upon one’s skull. Imagine a squirrel living in that tree hollow, their entire family history rooted within those ten miles. Their parents raised them in that hollow, the exact place where they raised their children. It was in the same hollow where they stored nuts and seeds, which they collected over the course of a lifetime, and trusted that it would last them a lifetime more. How desperate the squirrel must have felt! To have the fire climb up that reliable tree from the bottom up, and all its effort go up in flames. Forced out of their safe hollow, only to find the entire forest in flames. Strangely, my heart aches for them as if a flame burns within my own heart.
Strangely enough for I have never felt the dryness of the ground, of having a fluffy coat, of eating tree nuts, or of feeling heat that burns one’s form. As I swam along the Alaskan current, fire existed only as sparkling lights upon the peaks of waves. The feelings down here are often of the cold, of the dark, and of the dead falling slowly as everlasting snow within the water column. I do not understand what a fire is.
The fire is what I have heard from the others within the ocean. I was so curious that I sped up through the streams to catch up to those ahead of me and asked:
“When did the fire in Oregon start?”
And they said: “Maybe yesterday, maybe today, or a week earlier.”
I kept them longer with the stories that I’ve imagined. Stories of rising forest fires, melting icebergs, startled squirrels, and of life, death, and parting love.
So they asked: “You’ve never felt fire or seen forests of pines, fire does not exist within our waters. You’ve never run with a fluffy coat, felt gravity dragging you down, and eaten pinecones. Who are you to care?”
“Who are you to speak like you understand how it feels to burn?” And they swam away.
Sometimes, I slowed down to meet up with those behind me, and I asked:
“Is the fire in Oregon still burning?”
They said: “Maybe it stopped, maybe it didn’t. I didn’t check.”
I kept them longer with talks of imagined ecstasy. Talks of lives reunited after disasters, pine saplings growing out of the soot, and of love, peace, and sympathetic joy.
So they asked: “The end of a forest fire does not bring food to you like the cool upwelling, nor will those dancing sparks in your mind ever help you to find a mate. Why do you care?”
“Why do you grieve for other species as if they were your kind, why do you feel for distant tragedies as if they were your own?” And they, too, swam away.
I hear of the other things like I have heard of the Oregon fire and of the existence of squirrels. Year after year, I did not go to the mating grounds in the Alaskan rivers but stayed here and listened to what others had to say as they passed through the currents.
I heard of the orcas that I dare not go close to. I heard that they would carry the body of their deceased child on their backs and sing sorrowful songs. I’ve listened to the orcas singing at a distance, while we dive deep down to avoid their hunts. Did that song signify sorrow, or merely a call for a hunt?
I’ve also heard of a human who drove an airplane to watch that whale. Before his death, a seagull overheard his intentions. Did the orcas hear of him over the radio? One going towards death, one mourning over death, did these two creatures ever stand together in front of our common end? Did that static noise mix into the orca’s songs, did their sorrows intertwine?
Do humans feel sorrow, too?
They said that humans are heartless creatures who drove impenetrable ships made of steel, and from that ship, threw all-penetrating spears of the same steel. That the nets strangle even sharks, and the cranes lift whales out of the sea. Fire burns within the hearts of those steel monsters, as they hiss white steam into the air. The hulls filled with us fish-kind, as they drove the ships on for more killing.
The Greenland sharks often have the most to tell. They have lived through the course of history, witnessed the cities on land fall in fires of gunpowder, and been rebuilt by fires within a kiln. They swam the currents when the humans stabbed into each other and pushed the bodies into the sea, until the water stained red. Like fire, but only in colors, as iron runs within their veins. They spill so much blood: of other creatures, and of themselves.
But I heard they were once of our kind too, the humans. That once upon a time, written within the layers of the earth, we were once together but now apart. It's just that their gills turned into ears, and their fins turned into legs. Their blood, once the same temperature as the ocean water, now burns warm in winter snow. Oh, what must that time have been like, before all those changes? Did we all speak the same language underwater, and feel for each other as kindreds and friends?
And why do I care? What grants me the right to sympathize with distant sorrows or joy?
I’m merely a fish swimming along the Alaskan current. I’ve never seen the war of humans, never witnessed the fall of a burning tree, as snow made of water and burning fire does not exist down here.
These thoughts perplex me, which is probably why I have not reached the fertile hunting grounds of the Alaskan sea. Now I should take a few days and proceed to those upwellings, where calcium-rich krill rise up for the algae, and I shall then take a bite of them.
The krill that lived within the ice-cold waters. In the nights, they shone bright below the ice, like the starry sky had mirrored into the depths. Below the pressurized starry sky are the hydrothermal vents, the closest to flames within the ocean. On the vents lived clams and tube worms, alive within the lightless burning depth that smelled of sulfur. Metallic elements spill freely from the pulsing magma; through the gills of giant tubeworms, flow red blood rich in iron. It is said that they could live on for hundreds of years, feeling the heated water rushing through their bodies, powering their hearts. Does it feel boring to live down there, year after year, with only darkness surrounding?
But I’ve only swam through the Alaskan currents.
When I came back from the thoughts, I was stranded far from the warm currents. Fish of the same kind as me are all gone, perhaps at the hunting grounds, and ready for the mating season. Year after year, when they went past me, they wondered why I stayed here. I have so much to talk about! Of all the love, hate, and death that I’ve heard from the currents. But when I was talking to them, they often rushed for the mating grounds deep within the freshwater rivers, too busy to hear about a fish talking about the forest fires. And then they never return. Did they find the love of their lives and dance their final dance within the saltless rivers? Or did they get caught by bears while going upstream, lost in the eyes of their lovers?
I can’t even say that I understand others of my own kind. After all, I have only swum the Alaskan warm currents.
Diving too deep into everything, it is as if my mind had spread like the tentacles of jellyfish. With these transparent threads, I coil upon the stories and bring them to my mind’s hunger, dreamt that I could thus blend the world into my veins. I know, I know, I know! I know what happened today, yesterday, and the day before. But digestion does not mean understanding, and the barrier of the other minds divides us all.
Outside the warm currents, the ocean is vast and cold. It is dark at midnight; bioluminescence of various planktons dotted the black void. Below them are the abyssal plains, the trenches, and the hydrothermal vents.
Scientific theories in human society reach the ocean slowly. It is only recently that we have learned of their postulates formed years ago. But it does reach the waters through stories exchanged by the animals. So, as I’ve heard, the hydrothermal vents were where life originated, where we were born under a single common ancestor.
Will that place, where all the lives on the planet originated, melt away the barriers between our beings? I should go there, for after all, it is so cold out here.
As I delve down, the water gets darker. It is freezing even to a cold-water fish. I delve through the underwater galaxy of planktons, through the ever-falling ocean snow, until I feel the heated water rising from below. The water smells of sulfur.
Now I stand within the rising streams of a hydrothermal vent.
Transparent flames surround. It burns as if my scales are on fire, and the water pushes as if a tree falls onto my body. I am forced to twitch, to run, waving my fins like mad, for the transparent flames are all around. It burns within me as my soul’s ache spills through cracks of my form. But before it cooks through my scales, I realize that I still have no fur. I'm still outside of the lives of squirrels, the pine trees, the humans, and the orcas.
I still haven’t felt fire, dancing plasma that sheds light within the dark.