The Jellyfish Messenger

Interlude: The Joy of Creation

Interlude: The Joy of Creation

Long before the days of man, the heavenly creatures known as Angels watched over the Earth. Enormous cosmic beings with feathery white wings and tails, curved horns and sharp golden eyes, they were the first sapient beings to exist in this universe, and all other sapient life after descended from their lineage. The Angels had spread their gifts of life all across the cosmos, and they were about to do the same for the young Earth. After the latest mass extinction wiped out a huge chunk of the planet's current living creatures at the time, it was a blank slate for the Angels to begin their work.

Numerous prototypes spawned from their blood, creatures created in their image, with emotions and intelligence far beyond that of the feral beasts. They lived and died, none of them truly taking root on planet Earth, until the Angels gave birth to human beings- diminiutive creatures compared to themselves, but gifted with impeccable perserverance and intelligence, a genetic whirlpool that allowed them to take their place as the masters of the world. But not all of the prototypes before humanity fell to extinction.

The Angel Gaghiel chose to give life to the seas rather than land. Drops of his blood rained into the oceans, staining the waters crimson until the blood became small radiant spheres, something similar to souls. While the souls were like those of humans, they could not take on a tangible form all on their own. They needed hosts, and in the expansive seas, there were many hosts to be found. Taking over the bodies of feral sea creatures, they mutated, their bodies transforming to become something not animal, but not quite human either- a strange liminal rift between the two.

The bodies of these creatures had a mostly humanoid shape, but they possessed the features and adaptations of the sea creatures they had taken after, such as tentacles, fins, and scales. They became beings with human intelligence and reasoning, but included the abilities of aquatic animals. In some way, they were like a hybrid of man and beast. These entities came to be known as the Seafolk. If humans were the masters of the land, then Seafolk were the masters of the oceans. One could say they were like the humans of the sea.

Numerous, yet elusive, the Seafolk were a little-known existence to much of humanity, and to those that did allegedly encounter them, their appearance was explained in myths of mermaids, sirens, and other terrifying oceanic creatures told about in legends. Though in truth, they were more likely to have come across the true merfolk, the seabound Faeries that belonged to the Otherworld, the land of the dead.

Seafolk did not have the curiosity or desire to come near to shore, or to observe life on land. They preferred to stay hidden, deep in the oceans' remote regions where no one would find them. Because of their isolation, the Seafolk's societies turned out quite different than what would be seen from other Angelic lifeforms living on land, human or otherwise. They were oblivious to the immense world beyond the waters, even all the other worlds and realms aside from Earth.

The Seafolk could not venture outside the sea for long because their bodies were unable to absorb oxygen from the air. They would suffocate within minutes. Even in captivity, Seafolk would not survive long. There was no explanation for it- even with all the conditions of an aquarium being supposedly perfect for their species, they would soon die.

In that way, the Seafolk were like a forgotten, ancient relic of Earth's history, one that was so adapated to the realm it was born in, it could not adapt to survive anywhere else. Their species was frozen in time from an evolutionary standpoint. Even though it was possible for Seafolk and humans to speak and understand each other, most of the times communication was nearly impossible because of human beings' inability to breathe in water without special equipment, and the Seafolk's weak constitution outside of the ocean.

At the end of it all, the Seafolk were a mystery, a race that desired to live in isolation, unbothered. Perhaps that was the way it was meant to be. Maybe the Seafolk were never meant to be fully understood. It surely didn't seem like they wanted to.