Devonia
By: Allen Ashley
The world was changing but Devonia the lungfish was only conscious of what was happening to her. The daily tides receded quickly but she found that she could stretch her dorsal and pectoral fins downwards to touch the surface and propel herself forward from one pool to another. Breathing through her mouth in the non-water.
The food sources here were different but more plentiful. Her jaws made short work of mollusks and their cousins.
She understood that she had traveled a long way from the coastal sea that had been her home since being a spratling. She had no real way of measuring this distance – a certain number of swims and ungainly waddles, perhaps.
The water's taste had changed, too. She couldn't quite define it except that there was something missing. Fish have better memories than we give them credit for. Eventually, she recalled how once she had accidentally ingested some of the spawn that her partner Silenia had spread over her eggs. Sharp. Fizzing on the floor of the mouth. A substance and flavor humans would later define as salt. But all that was behind her now. Onwards and upwards through the fresh water and the land between, driven by evolutionary imperative.
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