I’d been alone for somewhere between 250 and 260 million years. I’d forgotten the exact date. Our prime had been the Devonian, and we’d been old news by the Permian. We’d become a joke by the Triassic and fish food by the Cretaceous. The Cenozoic had dragged by like the eon it was. At some point I’d looked around and everyone else was gone. I was still there, the spirit of a fish in the shape of a man. I breaststroked back and forth, parting underwater meadows with taloned mitts. I watched species come and go. I glided a lot, vain about my swimming, and not as fluid with my stroking as I would have liked to have been. I suffered from negative buoyancy. I was out of my element.Out of the water, I gaped. In the hundred percent humidity it felt like I should be able to breathe. My mouth moved like I was testing a broken jaw. My gills flexed and extended, to pull what I needed out of the impossible thinness of the air. The air felt elastic and warm at the entrance to my throat, as though it had breath behind it that never got through.
