From Curious Depths

                Jet currents of salt water channelled by oceanic trenches washed ever over him, the rushing fluid carrying myriad denizens of the depths past his limbs. Countless obscure forms and morphologies of aquatic life bumped into his body, unable to fight the torrent as it swept them onwards into the lightless expanse.
                Boneless cephalopods squashed and squeezed their bodies between his mighty fingers on their way through, and hard-shelled invertebrates clattered noiselessly against his hulking torso. They were all as sand, billowing against a cliff face in the wind and harmlessly ricocheting from the unmoveable form. But unlike the cliffs, in the thousands of years of bombardment he had endured there was no erosion or degradation of his monolithic body.  The forces of the deeps were a friend to him, and none would do him harm with their fleeting machinations. Far from crumbling his bulk, they hadn’t even woken him up.
                For years turned to centuries he had slept, ocean currents changing with each rise and fall of his enormous chest as the waters filtered through his cavernous gills. Vortices surrounded the pulsing air sacks by his neck, swirling to the rhythm his ancient and protracted life dictated. Vital processes spanning decades worked away inside his body, unchanged and uninterrupted for longer than the lifespan of empires. Somehow, in all the enduring years, cramp hadn’t presented an issue.
                In the darkness of the deeps, where no light could penetrate, he had lingered. An intrepid starfish with dozens of tendrils clung to his forehead with hundreds of suckers, fighting against the rush of water and determined to eat the algae and seaweed rooted between his scales. It inched towards a patch of leaves, deliciously broad and rich. They flapped as his chest rose and fell. They leaned and swayed in the currents. And then they were swept upwards, as one of his impossibly vast eyes opened.
                Saltwater washed directly across his eye for the first time in the history of whole nations. In the haze of waking, his dreams still playing around the antediluvian landscape of his mind, he stared into the black void and tried to comprehend the nothingness before him. He tried to focus on something, but there was very little available. Perceiving the scale of the abyss in front of him was a challenge as his timeless brain tried to rouse itself from ages of rest and inactivity. An eyeball which had previously looked upon epochs lost to history rolled downwards ponderously, and then back up again. Adjusting to the darkness it widened to consume whatever light it could find, and saw pin-pricks of luminosity darting by. The bioluminescent creatures of the ocean floor paid little regard to the dark tower which was gradually warming into activity once again, unaware of who or what they were bumping into and racing past.  They were far more concerned with getting to F, having left A some time ago and blasted straight through B, C, D and E thanks to the inescapable underwater currents.
                Drifting in from tides unseen a deep, melodic sound met ears like radar dishes from before history. It rose and fell like a wave, it's edges soft and undefined as it propagated through the abyss. Emanations from forever away sang into his head and soaked into his unfathomable mind.
                It was those bloody whales again, kicking up a racket. Their songs were beautiful, and he didn’t begrudge them the use of his oceans, but it was a bit much when he was trying to sleep.
                A mouth like a sinkhole yawned open, the lower jaw sinking down like a tanker disappearing beneath the waves. Current-borne creatures were carried into the maw by a deluge of seawater, swilling around teeth which had stood longer than temples and rinsing away the stale taste of centuries. Icy coldness rolled over his tongue, reminding him of sensations which had gone unfelt for time beyond comprehension. He decided that he had not missed the feeling of having a cold tongue; the jaw began to rise towards closure once more.
                Ancestral parts of his mind urged him to resume the dormancy which had seen him bedded into the fabric of the ocean floor. They spoke with the heritage of civilisations forgotten by those who had themselves been forgotten by history. They lectured that his role was to lay in wait beneath the waters until it was time for the leviathans to reclaim the world as their own. None of these voices had ever offered a convincing reason as to why the world had been de-claimed in the first place, however, so he had a hard time taking them seriously. And if there was a specified time for reclamation, one which they were contented to wait for in a seemingly endless sleep, how on earth had they known what it was? He’d never held much with prophecies, and these inconsistencies were a significant reason why.
                His brethren in the time before the sleep had spoken interminably of rising from their great dormancy when the land crumbled into the sea, the bones of surface dwellers turned to dust, and the ruins of their empires were swallowed by the earth. He’d always thought that was a silly idea though; it sounded far more interesting to rise up whilst the kingdoms were still going. It would be nice to have someone else to talk to, and they might be up to something worth watching. Why bother taking over the ashes of a dead world when one could wake up early and enjoy it with some tiny people fussing around over their intricate little lives.
                He’d long before concluded that whatever it was that everyone else was so averse to on the surface world, it can’t have been as bad as they were imagining. Leviathans were immensely powerful, terrifying in the scope of their mastery over nature and impenetrable to the feeble efforts of external forces; it was all a great fuss over nothing in his opinion, and the world above was worth seeing for himself before any hasty judgements regarding further ages of slumber were made.
                White noise in the distance of the ocean started to become apparent to his aeons-old hearing. Where the whale-song was diffuse, swelling in and out of audibility, these noises were harsh and choppy. They beat a single, drudging rhythm with no music, no melody, and no harmony. He wasn’t much of a fan, but shrugged his titanic shoulders. Times must have moved on. Time always did that. That’s what the leviathans had been banking on when deciding to hibernate, really. If time stopped while they slept then it would be a bit of an empty gesture.
                The sea floor shook. Sand and sediment shifted across the ocean bed as it slowly but unstoppably rose upwards. Fallen detritus which had collected over the years rolled down the newly formed slope and exposed long buried fossils to open water once more. Against the weight of sands and shipwrecks, as well as the crushing pressure of leagues of ocean water, his mighty legs bent at the knee and sought freedom. Duplicitously it seemed that the seas had sought to bury him as he lay motionless in the eras past, seizing the opportunity with which it had been presented. Nothing of this world could keep him down, however, and he was able to undo millennia of geological conspiracy against himself in mere moments.
                One at a time his hands followed the good example set by his legs, pulling free from the clinging sand and the rock they had been trying to form around him. Geology could seek to swallow him up, but he would break free and shatter boulders with barely a breath.
                Amid clouds which formed unseen in the darkness, the leviathan stood on the sea bed and shook his terrible bulk. Tendrils, tentacles, and appendages whipped one way and then the other in slow-motion through the water, shedding debris and shaking life back into themselves. Enormous webbed and clawed feet floated upwards and stamped back down, quaking the seabed and disturbing the hardiest bottom-feeders as they went about their noble business.
                Craning his neck upwards, he stared into the impenetrable darkness, knowing that a light was shining somewhere high above. He pondered the whole new world waiting on the surface, a world which had been born during his long slumber and which he was supposed to see only when it was long dead. It was an irresistible mystery, and too tempting to ignore for nothing more than the cryptic whisperings of sleeping kin. He never had been good at sleeping in, anyway. His gigantic arms flapped with a powerful beat, webbing catching the ocean water around him, and he started to ascend.
 
                Winds blowing from the southwest buffeted Paul as he paddled his surfboard out to meet the waves. In the cool air under skies of brilliant grey, he was prepared to get some cloud-bathing done at the same time. His wetsuit gripped at every muscle, clinging to him for warmth after he'd forced it into the late autumn sea. Low temperatures were fine by him as long as the waves were worthwhile. If anything, low temperatures were better because it meant that he'd have the beach to himself. His isolation was also, in part, because his usual surfing buddies were all busy, but he chose not to think about that when justifying his actions to himself. Personal narratives are better when they are self-empowering, rather than painting the narrator as a victim of circumstance, he felt.
                Gradually higher the waves carried him as he paddled further out. He'd been expecting relatively favourable surf for the time of year, and the harsh mistress of the sea was definitely delivering. Perhaps a little better than anticipated, in fact. Paul wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth though, although having never been gifted a horse he was yet to test the strength of his convictions on the matter.
                Equine generosity notwithstanding, the waves weren’t behaving in the normal way. They certainly had the ‘up-and-down’ element right, but they’d started to form circles in the water rather than approaching parallel to the shore. It seemed that they were steering away from him, which was definitely not something he’d learned about in surf-school. He hadn’t learned about it in normal school either.
                Paul might have been surfing solo, and he might have been in the course of getting shunned by the waves he was seeking, but he was not going to give up. Not after he’d already got himself wet. Plunging into a board-supported paddle, the best attempt he could make at a front crawl with nine feet of carbon fibre attached to him, Paul gave chase to the watery perturbations. Perhaps if he could just catch up with them they’d realise that he was good company, and exactly the kind of person they’d like to have riding on their heads; that was how he often thought of himself.
                Unfortunately for him, the waves had an equal tenacity to his own. Try as he might to reach them, the waves continued to bend away from him, accelerating farther away and even starting to drop below his level. Paul definitely couldn’t account for the sea level dropping. He peered beyond the line of the waves and saw that the land didn’t seem any more exposed than it should have been, but it was most certainly falling lower. Or alternatively, a part of his mind pointed out, he was rising. That would explain why he felt like he was going upwards, which should really have been clue number one.
                Looking around himself in the beginnings of a top-class panic, Paul saw that he was atop a dome of water, several feet above the sea level around it and still growing higher. Almost as significant as his looming terror was the relief that the waves had been fleeing the rising surge of water, rather than running from him.
                Distinctly confused by what was happening, but possessed of sufficient presence of mind not to trust it, Paul turned his board towards the shoreline and began paddling hard. Gaining some speed down the watery slope and catching the crest of descending waves, he unsteadily clambered onto his feet. If he was going to make a daring escape from an unknown swelling of the sea then he may as well do so whilst looking as cool as possible, and actually getting some surfing done to boot. It would make a tremendous story to tell his friends as well; much better to surf away from danger than splash untidily.
                As the waters continued to rise however, escape grew progressively less likely. Steeper and higher the surface went, causing Paul to accelerate yet still fail to put distance between himself and the ascending dome. Spray rained down from above as the surface tension started to fail, and to a soundtrack of deafening splashes Paul began to make the transition from surfing to tumbling. It was a common one for him.
                Flipping over and falling, parts of his body splashed in and out of the steep wall of water along the path of his descent. From his rotating and inverted viewpoint, Paul saw a dark shape rising upwards at the centre of the watery tower, dragging the surface of the ocean with it. Any satisfaction he derived from recognising why the sea had been acting so strangely was eclipsed by fear, as well as uncertainty over why something as vast as a whale would be surfacing so grandly at the coast. He didn't even think the water was deep enough where he was for something of that size. As he crashed into the sea below, he was at least relieved to know that it was deep enough to properly break his fall.
                Frigid waters closed above Paul’s head, blinding and deafening him to the shenanigans going on above. Disoriented for a moment, he waved limbs through the water and tried desperately to work out which way was ‘up’. It was his ankle that finally worked out the answer; being insistently tugged by the rope connecting him to his surfboard floating on the surface was a dead giveaway.
                Paul’s head crested the surface and he drew a deep breath of salty air and spray. Not contented with simply looming over him, the enormous tower of water was also raining down upon Paul in sheets and heavy splashes to help him relive the time he’d spent submerged, not even a second earlier. Clinging to his surfboard, Paul thrashed at the water and scrabbled towards the shoreline, only slowing down once the waterfall had long ceased to crash onto him.
                Panting with exhausted, ragged breaths he lowered both feet onto compacted sand and stood waist-deep in the sea. All-in-all it hadn’t been the least successful experience of his surfing career, but any trip which ends in desperately fleeing a wave is one worth questioning. Speaking of the wave, he span around to face it, questioning why it hadn’t beaten him back to the shallow waters. A wave was not what he saw.
                Paul didn't believe his eyes. He flat out refused to accept that what they were seeing was real and that they weren't lying to him. Standing now in the middle distance of the sea was something, a creature he supposed, which was far larger than any creature had a right to be. Paul didn't know how big a blue whale was exactly, but felt like it should be smaller than what he was seeing now for the sake of being reasonable about things. Reasonable size would do nothing to redeem the rest of the creature’s physical form, however.
                It stood on two legs as wide as his car was long, and their scaly girth rose up to a wide, lizard-like set of hips. A broad torso the rough shape of a whale’s body rose terrifyingly high into the sky, a pale belly standing out against the dark green-black scales which covered the rest of its monolithic form.
                At around this time Paul’s eyes decided not to believe him right back. They could only provide the data available to them, but his interpretation was clearly nonsensical. Slamming them shut, Paul shook his head, wiped the seawater away from his face, and tried again.
                The legs and torso were still there, unabashed at the difficulty they were giving him.
                Both sides of the torso were blanketed by broad fins, larger than hot-air balloons but probably containing few wicker baskets and butane burners. They stuck wetly around its body like Paul’s wetsuit clung to him, sea water pouring from their peaks.
                The creature splashed broad, flat hands with claws like a narwhal’s horn through the water’s surface. It was able to reach easily, despite its towering height, thanks to the disproportionately long, muscular arms to which those hands were attached. A single long fin like a crest ran all the way up their length, flattening and rising by the action of fine bones at protruding at regular intervals.
                Peering curiously down at the effect made by the splashing was the monster’s head. Had it not been moving freely atop the rest of the enormous body, Paul would have assumed it to be an extremely inconvenienced giant octopus, carried up either by mistake or with malice. Bulbous at the top and ending with a beard and moustache of heavy tentacles, the titan’s head was large enough to house a comfortable, if inconveniently sited, single-bed flat. Dorsal fins ran up each side and over the top like a cartilaginous hood or nautical cycle helmet. Its eyes glinted in the sunlight, polished mirrors bulging outwards like cannonballs dropped into loose sand.
                Even in the face of such marine sacrilege Paul’s mutually suspicious eyes and mind were able to agree on one matter; whatever they were looking at was far too large and unknown for him to want to stay nearby. Unable to look away, he started to stride backwards through the shallows and retreat to dry land. He’d never experienced a mammoth creature rising up through solid earth, and that made it more trustworthy than that traitorously liquid sea.
                Like a faulty showerhead, water was still running along the contours of the sea-beast’s muscled form. Channelled by the crevices and folds of its scaled flesh waterfalls cascaded downwards and left rivulets higher up, adding to the overall otherworldly sheen it possessed. A small sea’s worth of brine was flowing off it and back to the ocean, making irregular patterns and splashes among the waves and holding the creature’s attention. To see something so grand mesmerised by making swirling patterns in the water surface was disjointing to Paul’s mind; he could better imagine it tearing up half the country and feasting on whales than enjoying a water park.
                As Paul reached the shoreline and felt his feet sink into the soft sand of the beach he felt unaccountably safer. Having seen the monster breathing the air and standing on a pair of quite capable legs there was no reason to believe that a short walk across some sand would out-fox it, but if his panic wished to decrease under that assumption then he wasn’t about to correct himself. His mind raced with plans of what he could possibly do. Call the police? The army? The Royal National Lifeboat Institution? None of them had ever advertised any services for corralling sea monsters. And he’d have to get to his phone first, shut in the changing room lockers behind their famously temperamental locks. And he’d certainly his head-start whilst showering.
                Planning the logistics of getting a warning to the nation whilst also not feeling irritatingly salty for the rest of the day ceased immediately. The finned octopus which the titan called a head had shifted. It was looking directly at him.
                Paul started to sprint up the beach, sand spraying behind him and surfboard presenting quite an inhibitive challenge to rapid motion. Deep hollows traced his footfalls as he dug his way towards firmer ground, scrubby grassland beyond the dunes holding more appeal than it ever had before.
 
                Eyes which hadn’t felt the touch of sunlight in years beyond counting locked themselves on the small animal rushing out of the water. Its behaviour was fascinating. It had definitely noticed him rise from the abyss and fled to shore, but since then it seemed rather more intent on carving shallow burrows with its lower limbs, almost staying in place as it did so, whilst clutching its tail with the upper limbs. In the old ages, before the great slumber, he had never seen a creature grow such a large tail with such a thin line of flesh attaching to its body. And certainly that line of flesh never joined up at the end of one limb; just above the bottom was the traditional tail-connection-location.
                Between the fantastic water patterns and this strange beast, his brethren didn’t know what they were missing by waiting for the world to collapse before getting up. The early bird catches the worm he thought, although he wasn’t sure what birds or worms were exactly; he must have been picking up on thoughts from somewhere else. Either way, he was going to catch the interesting little animal.
                Sea water was rent asunder and flung high into the air by feet like ships as the leviathan strode towards the land. Stormy oceans would have envied the cacophonous sound of crashing waters, and falling cliffs would have aspired to cause such grand eruptions when crashing into the waves. For their first run since ice had swept over the world and retreated again, the leviathan’s legs were powerful and stable, pounding the sea floor as he propelled himself after the strange little creature.
                Earth, sand and water shook with each step the leviathan took. This seemed to give the retreating animal some trouble, slowing its already gradual pace. Tall plants, like rigid seaweed, shivered in time with the ground and shed what few yellow and brown leaves they had to their names. They wouldn’t have lasted for five minutes in the powerful currents of the ocean floor, let alone the epochs he had spent down there in the darkness.
                In barely a dozen steps the distance between the leviathan and the tiny animal had been closed. Taking care not to accidentally tread on the object of his interest, he got as close as possible and bent down, cupping clawed and webbed hands around to form a wall of scaled flesh.
                From within the hand prison strange sounds echoed, apparently emitted by the trapped animal, with impressive volume. Perhaps it was a semi-aquatic wailer, and the strange tail was used as a mechanism of generating such enormous sounds. A tickle on one of his fingers gave the leviathan cause to lift his hands slightly and peer inside; the little creature was trying to press itself through a gap between the hands.
                Worried about damaging the neither scaled nor hard-shelled animal, the leviathan lifted and shifted his fingers, forming a rolling wall of scales which let it keep moving without getting any farther along the beach. Even in the face of such futility, the semi-aquatic wailer kept on wailing and running. It needed to be soothed, the leviathan decided.
                Reaching out with the ancient and terrible powers it remembered from the old ages, the times swept over long ago and replaced with the surface world on which he now stood, the leviathan reached out. It stared directly into the little animal’s brain, feeling its thoughts processing rapidly. It seemed to be conjuring wild flights of imagination using not only memories and knowledge, but even previous flights of imagination as a basis. Things were far more complicated in there than the leviathan had been expecting, and he couldn’t even find an easy trail to follow for the purpose of its tail.
                Forcibly calming it would be more difficult than expected. It settle on a different approach.
                “Calm yourself. I will not hurt you.”
                Paul stopped scrabbling against the slick scales, chest burning with exhaustion, legs weakening, and surfboard getting seriously on his wick. If he didn’t know better, and he was deeply unsure as to whether he knew better or not at this stage, then he would have sworn that the monster just spoke to him. It sounded exactly like he would imagine it to. But the sound came from inside his own head.
                “That’s better.” The voice added.
                “What the hell?!” Paul shouted, feeling a whole new reason to worry.
                The leviathan was impressed; it could wail for all sorts of reasons, and was even capable of wailing in a distinct language.
                “What is your tail for?”
                Paul was too terrified to answer. His mind was too confused to think. His pancreas felt fine, and kept doing its job.
                Delicately, the leviathan pushed Paul into one if its palms using a long claw tip and lifted him closer to its face. With the same claw it then set about trying to gently push Paul’s surfboard away from his body to better examine it.
                Paul stared upwards, paralysed with helpless anxiety, at the goliath sea monster which was currently trying to speak to him telepathically, for the purpose of identifying what the tail he didn’t have was for. Once again his eyes and mind came to an impasse and refused to accept one another’s testimony. His brain couldn’t accept that two gigantic orbs the size of a van were staring down at him, and his eyes utterly rejected the notion that such orbs could possibly be eyes like themselves. But his other senses were throwing their own hats into the ring. A definite aroma of salt and fish was drifting out from the monster, which didn’t cause anyone undue worry; it had risen from the depths after all. Every scale had been icy to the touch, which was also reasonable, but the fact that they felt like armour plates and were the size of Paul’s chest was a point of contention. Watery, bubbling breaths were audible from the monster’s neck and face, which sided wholly with the mind’s interpretation that what vision was showing it was an anthropomorphic cephalopodan life form.
                Paul considered himself to be a pretty open-minded type of person. He was a surfer, so laid-back acceptance of new concepts was part of the territory. He regularly spoke in the kind of slang which his parents hated, and he even made vegan choices, whatever that meant. Probably having the same taste in shorts as someone who doesn't consume dairy. So he thought that it was a pretty severe statement about the shock of what he was seeing that even his unclosed mind was shocked.
                Water dripping from the tips of claws and fins fell onto Paul as the leviathan pored over him. It gently rolled his surfboard over and back, moved the rope gingerly, and gave testing prods to Paul’s limbs.
                The leviathan noticed with interest that the wailing had stopped.
                “What is your tail for? Why have you stopped wailing?” he asked curiously.
                Paul’s panic was, against the odds, starting to fall. Or perhaps it had just tried to get so high that the whole concept had cycled right back around to the beginning again. This psychic octopus genuinely seemed confused by his surfboard.
                “It’s not a tail. It’s a-“
                “Surfboard?” the leviathan’s voice interrupted in Paul’s mind. It had heard the end of the sentence before he’d said it. It was really inside his head, reading through his thoughts. What was this thing? No sooner had he thought it, than the creature answered.
                “Me? I think you would call me…” the voice trailed away, echoing through the synapses of Paul’s brain momentarily “… a leviathan.  And ancient. Those are the words you would use.”
                “The words I would use? How do you even speak my language?”
                “I don’t. But you do. I am using your brain to conjure the thoughts and words I wish to portray. I have no need for your language, but you do, so I make you use it. My voice sounds like you imagine it would, because you are imagining it. You already consider yourself to have an open mind, so I didn’t think you would mind me coming in and making myself at home.”
                As far as Paul remembered, having an open mind had never before meant that an impossibly old leviathan from the depths of an ocean trench could just waltz in telepathically and talk to him. To be fair, the leviathan could have trivially entered any mind he liked, whether it considered itself to be closed or not. Even if Paul had developed some form of rudimentary mental powers they would have been as nothing to the leviathan. Whenever he stayed outside of other minds, it was out of courtesy and nothing more.
                “Do you have a name?” Paul thought. He didn’t even get to the point of starting to ask.
                “I have no name which could be vocalised. I am an imprint of psychic energies, a shape, a colour. But I am common to all of creation, a single point so far back in your history that no-one may claim more of a connection to me than any other. You seem to have a lot of associations with every word, you know. I don’t want to you think of me being closer to any one thing than another. I must be the most common name among you all. You may think of me as... John.”
                Paul lay in the hand of John the leviathan and tried to wrap his head around what was going on. When his brain proved too rigid, or possibly too full of leviathan, to wrap around anything, he started wondering what would happen next. He remembered horror films with monsters rising from the ocean and destroying cities. He remembered images of great galleons being brought down by tentacles from beneath the waves. He’d heard stories of ancient gods sleeping and waiting to bring about the apocalypse.
                “That’s the closest one, I suppose.” John interjected. Feeling that wriggly panic feeling start to appear again in Paul’s mind, he continued. “Not that we’re going to end the world. And I woke up early. My brethren are obsessed with lying dormant until the sky falls and the final leaf dies in the last forest. I just wanted to see everything before it got overripe, and have no intention of bringing about the doom of the surface world. It sounds much more entertaining to see it un-doomed.
                I wouldn’t call us gods though. Maybe…” Paul thought he could feel John rooting through his brain for another word. Or perhaps he was imagining it. Or imagining the feeling of imagining it. There was a lot try to get to grips with. “…a demi-god is better.”
                There was a little practical relief to be experienced at that correction. Being in the hands of an early-rising demi-god compared to an apocalypse heralding god at least gave the world more time to live, but existentially it still opened a lot of doors through which Paul had no intention of walking. He forced himself to remain in the terrestrial, immediate world. Not least of all because he didn’t want John exploring the hypothetical spiritual truths conjured by a human’s distressed mind.
                “I agree. I’d like to see all the exciting things that are real first. Then we can explore your mind-worlds.”
                Paul shuddered again. None of this thoughts were sacred anymore.
                “You can take your surfboard off?” John asked with telepathically imitated surprise.
                “Of course!” Paul thought.
                “Would you?”
                Of all the requests to be made by a demi-god, that was a relatively achievable one. He just hoped that it wouldn’t be claimed as a sacrifice or gift, because it had been expensive and Paul really couldn’t face buying another one right now.
                John contemplated reassuring Paul on the matter; his tiny surfboard would do the leviathan no good at all and he just wanted to look at it. But Paul’s mind felt distinctly uncomfortable with conducting conversation on the level of the subconscious, so the leviathan kept his silence.
                Paul fumbled with the Velcro strap around his ankle, dexterity inhibited by the cold and by how much his hands were shaking. He’d not necessarily become a lot more comfortable with the situation despite John’s claims of having honest and curious intentions. The leviathan’s gigantic face loomed closer, watching Paul with an intense and unnerving interest. With every exhale a spray of salty water prickled Paul’s face. He could see the suckers on the inside of John’s facial tentacles, glistening wetly in the daylight, and tried desperately not to think about them clinging to his body and dragging him under the sea.
                With the board freed John was able to better examine it. He lifted it carefully with two clawed fingers and held it close to his eyes, poring over every detail.
                “Did you create this?”
                “No… no I bought it.”
                “Bought?” John questioned. When he felt Paul start to wonder how exactly he might explain currency to an ages-old ancient leviathan, John nipped the problem in the bud and simply dived further into Paul’s memory.
                “I understand. You trade time for this ‘money’, and then trade ‘money’ for nearly anything else. Interesting. Time is more valuable to you, I think, than I.” John assessed.
                Whilst Paul was still turning this over in his head, and puzzling over how something which came from inside his own head could be hard for him to comprehend, John continued.
                “You have craftsmen to create the things you can’t or won’t. You’re all very interesting. This is so much easier than trying to piece it together from the ruins of a civilisation.”
                “Could you please put me down?” Paul thought.
                “I’d like to look at you a bit more closely first. But I can see that I am distressing you.” John responded, returning Paul gently to the ground.
                “Thank you.” Paul said reflexively, even though gratitude was a strange way to characterise what he felt. It was more like relief mixed with a continuation of great terror.
                John crouched down low, still looming higher than a building over the beach, and placed Paul’s surfboard on the water, watching with sincere interest as it bobbed gently on the waves. Paul couldn’t help but think that John was something like a psychically gifted puppy with the way he watched commonplace effects. A puppy trapped within the body of an eternal sea monster which was waiting for the end of the world to roam in the ruins of all humanity had made, but still a puppy.
                “Your surfboard floats well.” John projected. It was a pretty basic measure of competence for a surfboard not to sink, so Paul wasn’t sure how to respond. Then he remembered that responding was strictly surplus to requirements in the presence of the leviathan.
                “I would like to see more of what you semi-aquatic wailers have created. Would you show me?”
                “Show you… around…” Paul thought in fragmented bursts. Naturally his immediate reaction had been negative, on account of still being rather afraid of John. But the leviathan was already blasting through those feelings and curiously looking into why.
                “Don’t worry about everyone else being scared. I won’t hurt them either. And you can tell them that I am only learning about you.” John placated.
                “I’m a customer service advisor. I don’t think that people will really find my word convincing about the intentions of a demi-god.”
                John dived back into Paul’s head, searching for precedents and tracing the mental pathways associated with every word Paul had used.
                “It is no different to the treatment of your other gods. You would be my…” he searched again, feeling the concept in Paul’s head but struggling for the word. “…what’s-its-name.” he finished contentedly. Paul cursed his own poor memory for vocabulary. It was the stress of having his mind probed by an ancient demi-god, he told himself by way of comfort. Feeling Paul’s feedback to ‘what’s-its-name’, John searched again.
                “I mean that you could be my…” He dug into every crevice of Paul’s consciousness, dragging up words and images of varying appropriateness to convey his ideas. “Word-spreader.”
                Paul’s lack of clarity under such stressful circumstances was only making communication, even telepathic communication, much more difficult. And this was technically two beings trying to communicate within his own head. If he tried to get the message across to a head entirely separate from his own it would only get worse.
                Paul’s thoughts communicated that he didn’t think he would be able to act as either a word spreader or the noun he was struggling to find.
                “Why not? You can communicate with the others, I have seen it in your memory. And I can conjure the words for you to say from your mind.” John explained, kindly making the job very easy on Paul.
                “I have work in the morning, for one thing. My manager wouldn’t it so much if I bunked off to spread the word of a monster from the sea.”
                “Would you like me to doom him?” the leviathan offered, still watching the surfboard bob up and down.
                “I don’t know if that would be a good idea.” Paul thought, tentatively. “What does it entail exactly?”
                “No idea. But I can herald the doom of mankind and shepherd the downfall of kingdoms, according to my ancient brethren. Does this manager of yours have a kingdom which might be susceptible to falling down?”
                “I don’t think so, no. Not many people do these days.”
                “A shame. But not to worry. You can spread my word while I walk the surface, and then provide customer service advice again afterwards.”
                Paul couldn’t think of a way to keep saying no. John felt that, and assumed that it was the same as acceptance.
                “You need to get changed first, of course.” John observed, feeling Paul’s concerns from earlier. “Lead the way. I will bring your surfboard; worry not for its safety.” he said magnanimously.
                Without thought, Paul wandered his way up the beach to the scrubby, broken ground beyond the sand, and the empty car park past that. At the other end of the tarmac stood the facilities building; a white-painted brick construction containing lavatories of highly variable condition, changing rooms with a healthy layer of sand and dirt on the ground, and the lockers to which Paul had entrusted his valuables. It was an insult to logic and statistics that he’d never suffered the loss of anything sealed into those thin metal containers, even in the height of the summer season, but he kept using them all the same.
                John picked up on these thoughts as he took a few shortened strides behind Paul. It was slow going to follow the tiny human around like this, but its mind was very clear on the matter of not wanting to be picked up again. The leviathan resolved to see how things progressed and raise the topic for discussion again if necessary.
                Pushing the creaky, green door open, Paul disappeared inside the gents changing room. John the ancient one felt for Paul’s mind but found nothing solid enough passing through to give him a strong idea of what he could be seeing. The concept of a space in which these animals changed their outer skins was intriguing; were they especially warm or clean to prevent contamination of the natural skin layers? Did they offer favourable conditions for the preservation of the garments or ease of application? What data he could find within the probed mind pointed to a negative answer for those questions. John was yet to find a way of using the animal’s brain to see through its eyes or feel its senses directly, which was restraining him from seeing into the white, unnatural cave structure.
                He pondered for a short while on the matter. Technically speaking it wasn’t a lack of ability to consume Paul’s thoughts which stopped him seeing into the building, it was merely what Paul’s mind called ‘the roof’. From what John was able to learn about roofs and roof-like objects in the human’s memories, the presence of a roof was a relatively easy problem to solve.
 
                Wetsuits had notorious abandonment issues, Paul decided. Every time he tried to take it off, it gripped on tightly to his ankles and refused to let go gracefully, forcing him to participate in the hopping dance of suction and struggle. Across the tiled floor he bounced, yanking at the legs, stomping on folded neoprene, and desperately endeavouring to free himself from the insulating prison he’d inflicted on himself.
                Amid the sounds of splashing and squelching, a groaning and creaking echoed through the ageing outbuilding. It was common enough in high winds to hear the roof structure flexing, but this felt different. There was something more sustained about it, and a straining quality which came from all around. Dust fell from the joists above his head, landing on the wet ground and adding to the miscellaneous detritus and litter. It wasn’t necessarily any dirtier from the arrival of the grey powder, just more varied in its filth.
                A narwhal’s horn punctured through one edge of the ceiling, light blinking in around the edges and small sections of tile crumbling inwards. Echoing off the tastelessly tiled inner walls of the changing rooms, Paul was able to experience the unusual sound of a tearing building, in time-delayed stereo, to a background percussion of falling masonry.
                Timbers twisted and cracked as the leviathan pulled upwards at the roof structure, ripping it free from the walls joist by joist. Fixings tore themselves free and clattered to the shower floor, presenting an unacceptable risk of foot piercing for any potential user and clogging up the drains. Unsure of what else to do, Paul scrabbled across the floor and cowered underneath the long bench-seat running along the length of the wall as daylight spilled in. From the exposed space where the roof used to be a wave of cold air rushed into the changing room, which had by no means been warm in the first place, and bit at Paul’s exposed flesh. As goose-bumps started to rise across his skin, Paul cursed the clinginess of his wetsuit delaying him in getting dressed.
                Exercising a paradoxical amount of care, considering how blasé he’d been about ripping a building apart, John placed the roof neatly on the ground of the carpark. His two moon-like eyes emerged over the parapet of the ravaged changing room and peered in, curiously lapping up the details of the strange skin-switching chamber. Eagerly he speculated to himself about the nature of the dark maws which opened into the ground, covered with tarnished grey bars. They were a mystery, but not as much as the white-stone basins of water in small, square enclosures. Perhaps they were points of worship to the sea, or to his brethren slumbering beneath the waves, far down in the deeps.
                John felt for Paul’s mind to seek answers for his questions about this place of holy ritual. When he found it, he was surprised to note the displeasure playing around Paul’s consciousness and colouring his thoughts.
                For his part, Paul thought that his displeasure should have been patently obvious; he’d been assaulted by falling plaster and brick whilst fighting a losing battle against his own wetsuit. Not only that, but he felt unaccountably bashful about the invasion of privacy. He couldn’t justify to himself why it felt worse to be seen undressing than to have his very mind opened up for someone else to look at, but supposed that it was because the opportunity for mental invasions didn’t come up very much. If he spent much time at all around this leviathan, he thought to himself, that discrepancy would very soon close itself up again.
                “I would like to know the purpose of this temple of skin-changing.” John spoke into his thoughts. Without waiting for an answer he dived though the pathways of Paul’s synapses.
                While his own brain was being used as an encyclopaedia, Paul tried to finish up with wrestling his wetsuit and getting dressed. A stiff sea breeze was building up inside the now convertible outbuilding, and it was all getting far too much; he needed to take back at least some form of control in his life to calm down.
                “These toilets of yours are a strange concept.” John concluded after thoroughly investigating the topic.
                “It’s sort of hard to imagine life without them at this stage.” Paul replied, tying his shoe laces having regained control over his apparel. John accepted that response readily, since he had noticed Paul’s inability to consider existence without a flushing lavatory.
                “When the kingdoms of humanity are but a bitter stain across a dying landscape, no life will know of the toilet or mourn its passing.” John informed Paul in his philosophically maudlin way, hoping to provide some perspective. It was entirely unnecessary. “I would see more of your civilisation.”
                “Civilisation would definitely prefer it if you didn’t tear apart every building you come across.” Paul’s thoughts conveyed.
                “They are but transitive flashes in the life of the planet, the merest glimpse on the timelines of the leviathans. Every building shall be ashen powder crushed into the dying ground when we walk the surface again. It is no difference whether they are rent apart now or later.” John argued.
                “Be that as it may, the other humans won’t necessarily see it that way.” Paul answered diplomatically. He was starting to get the hang of constraining his conscious thoughts. John couldn’t help but congratulate him on that achievement.
                “What would you have me do to learn their secrets then? I would very much like to see within each of your structures first hand.”
                Paul had no idea of what alternatives they had, let alone which one he favoured. John picked up on that too.
                “Perhaps we will think of something on the way.” He transmitted amiably. “Your settlement of Widding-by-the-Bay is nearby; a suitable focal point of your society.”
                Paul didn’t think that John would find much society in Widding. There were people there, but that was about as far as he was comfortable with taking it. The leviathan didn’t seem to mind either way.
                “I don’t think I will fit in your car, even if you put the seat all the way back.” John assessed, feeling Paul’s consideration of getting to Widding. “But I can walk. Such distances are trivial, and one day I shall walk across the globe in its entirety as it collapses into eternity.”
                “I get the picture, thanks.”
                “I am glad that we understand one another.”
                His projected voice had an innocent sincerity to it with which Paul was struggling.
                “Drive your car and I shall follow.”
 
                In the pale, overcast light of the late morning Paul found the roads to be quiet. Winding around the narrow, hilly roads which ran between coastal farmland he was presented with stretch after stretch of empty tarmac, bearing him towards the unsuspecting but not entirely undeserving town of Widding-by-the-Bay. Stone walls and neatly trimmed hedgerows alternately flanked the way ahead, but failed to maintain that duty behind him. Paul was only afforded fleeting glimpses of their lapsing discipline however, since the vast majority of the view behind him was obscured by the ancient leviathan stomping along behind the car.
                Each titanic footfall crushed another wall or bush, cracked the tarmac, uprooted trees, carved away a swathe of grassland, or at the very least left a soggy footprint comprised of detritus from the afore mentioned destruction. Being significantly wider than the road and larger than the agricultural structures they passed, John forged his own path along the road and rendered it entirely unusable after travelling through.
                With wide-eyed wonder, not that his eyes could be anything but wide, he craned his neck from one side to the other as he travelled, soaking in the details of every view and marvelling at all the surface world had to offer. This lack of attention to where he was putting his feet contributed to the overall collateral damage. Frequently he would stop and lean close to a plant, or crouch down to poke at an object of interest with a finger as wide as a veteran tree. Every time, he displayed the paradoxical care over what he was investigating, before indiscriminately crushing which happened to fall in his path ahead.
                Paul didn’t stop to wait for the enormous sea-monster. So great was John’s stride that catching up proved to be no challenge at all, especially if he didn’t concern himself over what he trod on.
                As the leviathan and his adopted guide approached Widding the roads started to widen, and inevitably they came across other road users, many of whom didn’t seem to be at ease with the sight of John ambling down the road towards them. At distances which varied in relation to their visual perception, the other drivers would slam on the brakes and spin their cars around rather than approach the leviathan. More than a couple took detours via verges, hedgerows and ditches, but regardless of the real or potential damage to their vehicles they made good their flight from the approaching monstrosity. They all fled back in the direction of Widding, which was now visible to John in the middle distance and growing tantalisingly close.
                “Your settlement is tiny like you are.” John transmitted to Paul.
                “What else were you expecting? I thought you saw it through my mind anyway?”
                “Your perceptions and memories are not always accurate.” John explained, thinking to himself that those toilets must serve another, greater purpose than that which he had learned of in Paul’s mind.
                “Well, it’s only a small town. There’s no need to build skyscrapers or huge warehouses here.” Paul thought by way of justification. He also thought that creating any more Widding than there already was would be a bad thing, like hoping for a foul smell from the land-fill to spread farther.
                “Skyscrapers? You seek to harvest something from the skies?” John asked excitedly, diving back into the recessed of Paul’s mind whilst still ploughing his way along the road. “Oh, they are just tall buildings. A grand name for such a thing.”
                “They’re pretty big for humans.” Pauls thought defensively.
                “I imagined that empires falling to the sea to herald my brethren’s return would be larger.” John replied conversationally. “Perhaps it will be an empire after yours has ceased to exist which calls us back to the surface.”
                Unsurprisingly, Paul didn’t find that to be terribly comforting.
                “I do like your sheep, however.” John said. “They are pleasingly… fluffy. Creatures under the sea are rarely fluffy.”
                Paul pictured what would happen if a fish had the woollen coat of a sheep.
                “Hmm. It doesn’t work so well with water.” John weighed in, also viewing the image. “I hope that time allows a creature to overcome that hurdle one day.”
                Widding-by-the-Bay high street was rapidly approaching; a row of quaint and traditional stone buildings mixed with more modern shop fronts, the presence of each one spoiling the effect of the other, but all of them terraced and three storeys high. It was neither here nor there, not quite a seaside village, not quite a modern shopping district, and nothing like somewhere Paul wanted to be. Given that an ancient monstrosity from the bottom of the ocean had just rocked up at the outskirts of town, Paul was even less enamoured with it.
                A collection of residents and passers-through were also lamenting the arrival of John the leviathan, despite not knowing he was a leviathan specifically, or indeed that he had named himself John for the purposes of communication with humanity. Originally the majority of the assembled crowd had been rather more focused on the hatchback which had come careening into the high street through a red light and deposited itself neatly in the corner of a second-hand book shop, having swerved to avoid a bus. Several relevant questions regarding why exactly the hatchback driver had elected to ram a building or disrespect the red-yellow-green system had been asked, and initially the answer offered had been ignored. None of the judgemental crowd had really believed any of the disjointed screaming about a giant monster with tentacles and claws marching towards the town. Their local paper and residents association would definitely have heard about a celebrity visit like that, meeting it with enthusiasm for publicity and throwing up staunch resistance against their town being spoilt by media types in equal measure.
                Now, with John rapidly closing in and Paul’s silver estate car rushing along the road ahead of it, being chased by it perhaps, the hatchback driver’s concerns were being taken more seriously. The jury was still out, however, as to whether her insurance company would honour the circumstances of the accident or declare it an act of god, ruling that timeless demigods were still sufficiently sacrosanct for the purpose of actuarial calculations.
                All around Widding the air came flaring to life with radio waves, electromagnetic alarms being raised in discordant unison. Only one of them had to do with car insurance. The rest were spurred into existence by the frankly reasonable panic at seeing something more at home in an arcane myth appearing at the top of the high street. At the emergency services telephone exchange several operators hung up amid complaints of time-wasters and dangerous pranks, but when images started to appear online of a gigantic squid monster, a large helping of humble pie came free with every call.
                In all the images of crowds and groups of humans that John had witnessed inside Paul’s mind, none of them had featured quite as much screaming and running about the place as this. Even the noisiest and busiest crowd memories had more structure and purpose to them; these people were all wailing in much the same way that Paul had earlier. Perhaps, he thought to himself, this was just their way of saying hello to things that they hadn’t witnessed before.
                “How best do I return this greeting?” John enquired with polite eagerness. He couldn’t find any useful precedents within Paul’s memories.
                “Greeting? They’re terrified! You need to let them know you don’t want to do any harm.”
                “OK, can you tell them that for me? You are my word-spreader after all.”
                Paul pulled up at the side of the road. He’d reached the blockade created by the crashed hatchback and panicking crowd, so there was no way to drive any farther ahead.
                “Somehow I doubt they’re going to listen to me.” Paul worried to both himself and John.
                “You seem to be able to picture both success and failure inside your head. Please try.”
                Feet which had spent the rise of humanity underwater came to a halt outside Widding, one crushing the road and the other ruining a well-tended verge and some small trees. In the shadow cast by the leviathan Paul strode towards the frenzied throng, arms held high and wide.
                “Everyone please calm down!” he shouted. “There’s no reason to panic!” he added, not feeling completely confident in the truth of that statement.
                There was no appreciable decrease in the amount of worried energy.
                “The leviathan means no harm. He just wants to… watch us and stuff.” Paul said, immediately struggling. It just felt wrong to be preaching the word of a sea monster which he himself didn’t entirely trust, especially in a well-fitted jumper and jeans. Every time he pictured someone doing what he was currently doing they were dressed in bedsheet, like the ancient Greeks he’d learned about in school.
                “Get away from it!” someone shrieked back at him.
                “You’ll be crushed!”
                “It wants to eat us!”
                “It wants to buy up the vacant properties and inflate the house prices!” the chairperson of the residents’ association worried.
                “He doesn’t! He wants to watch us for some reason!” Paul corrected desperately, but without the bedsheet, all they saw was a man in danger of getting crushed, and not an emissary of new knowledge.
                “Because you’re all very interesting.” John reminded Paul helpfully. Paul could feel the leviathan smiling while he said it, somehow.
                “He wants to watch us because we’re very interesting, he says. I’ve not seen him crush a single living thing yet.”
                It was technically true, if one ignored the fact that plants were alive. Paul couldn’t help but feel that if he added anything to his statement it would only make the people more worried, especially after foolishly ending with ‘yet’. There was a lot of nuance to this word-spreading lark, and he was learning it the hard way.
                As luck would have it, the crowd wasn’t particularly listening anyway. Having engaged with Paul briefly, they went back about the business of fleeing down the street. At what some of them considered to be a safe distance there was a small sea of flashes from phones and handheld cameras, which intrigued John even further. Without a moment’s hesitation he went rifling through Paul’s mind to discover why some of these humans were able to emit intense bursts of light.
                “They are making a permanent memory outside of their bodies?” John interpreted from the raw data available to him “That’s a wonderful idea.”
                “It’ll be proof for when they eventually tell someone about what they’re seeing.” Paul considered. John rolled that concept around in his mind; if every person here was trying to attract other people, then he would certainly be able to see even more of them soon. That was decided to be terrific news.
                “In the meantime let us go forth. Continue spreading my word, please. Maybe you could introduce me?”
                Paul sighed. He also carried out the thought-equivalent of a sigh for John’s benefit.
                “This is John, and he has just woken up from being asleep at the bottom of the sea.” Paul announced to anyone willing to listen. One sentence in, he’d decided that he already didn’t believe himself. He was dismissing his own testimony as the ramblings of a madman, despite the leviathan standing behind him. “He just wants to see what life has made on the surface, so he is going to look around Widding.”
                A rain of debris fell from John’s feet as he stepped into the town proper, carefully placing his feet along the high road to avoid damaging the buildings. Paul thought for a moment that he was going to become entangled in the power lines, but saw that John had deftly snapped the cables without noticing, leaving the telegraph poles to fall onto the street and loose wire to whip uncontrollably. In all honesty, it wasn’t helping Paul to generate the ‘benign observer’ perception of the leviathan.
                “Please be careful, John!” Paul thought, almost shouting it inside his own head.
                “It’s OK, I won’t break anything.” John answered back, raising Paul’s suspicions that the leviathan wasn’t giving him his full attention. He was currently engaging himself with examining a television aerial on top of a roof. With some delight he was gently bending it using one claw, then watching it wobble and shake back into place. “These are delightful.”
                “Look what you’ve already done to the road!” Paul thought, trying to direct the leviathan’s attention to where it was needed.
                John paused his first lesson in telecommunications and looked directly down at the ground. Distinct footprints were visibly depressed into the tarmac, the fallen telegraph poles had taken their toll on some ground floor windows, and more than one car had been flipped over.
                “That’s all quite untidy.” John assessed, hoping that to be the answer that Paul was looking for, although given that he was already inside the human’s mind it was a long shot.
                “You keep treading on things. It’s all completely destroyed behind you!”
                John stroked his tentacle beard with one enormous hand, pondering Paul’s stance.
                “Do you think that’s going to be an issue?”
                “Yes! Yes it will be. Everyone is terrified that you’re going to demolish their town and kill them.” Paul clarified, disbelieving that clarification was even necessary.
                “What if I doomed them all? Would that remedy the situation?” John proposed hopefully.
                “I don’t think you’re grasping this.”
                John filled Paul’s head and tried to understand how dooming could possibly be a bad thing.
                “I see.” He projected finally. “I will not doom them to allay their fears. But seeing that I have already carved this small wake of carnage, it seems to me that I may as well continue. I will not have to crush another town to see the same things that way.”
                Paul didn’t think that the people of Widding would take any comfort in that.
                “I understand your reservations, but please at least try spreading this word for me.” John persisted. “I shall investigate this…” he popped back into Paul’s mind for some context “…super market.”
                Ruffling the tarmac up like a blanket, John slid one cyclopean foot backwards until he was resting on one knee. Crushing a post-box with one hand as he placed it on the pavement, he then pushed the other foot back to kneel.
                Paul started walking along the road towards the screeching crowd while John laid his head down on one side to peer through the broad front window of the mini supermarket. It wasn’t likely that John’s decision would be well received, and he suspected that the people of Widding would adopt a pro-‘shoot-the-messenger’ position when they were told. It was just one more reason to dislike the town.
                “Everyone, please try to calm down! I know it looks bad but he doesn’t mean any harm.” Paul said launching in on the defensive. “He’s much too large to cope with narrow high roads but he’s trying to be careful.”
                “How the hell do you know?” shouted an angry woman. Having seen her sad-looking jacket, Paul wasn’t surprised that she was angry.
                “Yeah, what’s the deal?” A young man demanded.
                “I don’t know! He just appeared from the sea and started reading my mind.” Paul explained “He wants to see what’s on the surface world before he goes back down to sleep again... I think.”
                “Get rid of it!” the bad-coated woman instructed, with undeserved authority.
                “I can’t control him. He just wants to speak through me. He told me that I was his word-spreader.”
                “Word-spreader?”
                “You mean like a prophet?”
                “… I guess!” Paul accepted, realising that ‘prophet’ must have been the word that John was looking for inside his head. He knew that it would come back to him eventually. Or be given to him; either way.
                “Spread the word that he’s got to leave!” An elderly gentleman spat.
                “I tried that one. He… he says that he won’t go and break any other towns like this one. I made him understand that much. But…”
                “But what?” the gentleman interrupted, delaying Paul from telling him the exact piece of information he wanted.
                “…but he says that, erm, since this place is already ruined he’s going to finish up looking around.” Paul said with a sheepish grimace. “Sorry.”
                True to his predictions and preconceptions about the people of Widding, they were not enthused about taking one for the team. Their apoplexy and renewed panic saw to delivering that message in no uncertain terms.
                Paul wandered back up the high street to deliver the lack of acceptance with which John’s intentions had been met. It was exactly this kind of selfish attitude that Paul expected to encounter every time he came to Widding, although he conceded that it was a little more understandable this time. As the assembled group of people re-ignited the firestorm of electrical communication with their updates on the situation, he tried to think of what he could possible say to John. He’d already asked directly for the leviathan to step away from the town and exercise some caution; there didn’t seem to be anywhere else he could take that request.
                “Can you hear me yet, John?” Paul thought, suddenly wondering if the ancient monster had been listening in the whole time. The lack of response, however, implied that he was sufficiently distracted. With one finger poking through the supermarket door in pursuit of investigating the brightly packaged tortilla chips, John certainly appeared to be deep in concentration.
                “John?” Paul thought a little louder. Still nothing. One of the Cretaceous cephalopodan eyes was pressed directly into the glass now, striving to get as close of a look as possible and facilitate the liberation of snacks. Shredding the welcome mat and doors as he did so, John pulled his hand free of the doors and swivelled one eye towards Paul.
                “Hello Paul.” He thought amiably. Paul noticed that a few of his face tentacles were slithering their way into the shop. “My tentacles aren’t inhibited by endoskeletons or cartilage; they can investigate more easily.” John added when he saw the direction of Paul’s gaze.
                “Right… well, I’m afraid that your proposal to do the rest of your damage here didn’t go down very well. The crowd didn’t like it.”
                “That’s a shame.” John assessed, looking through the fresh memories in Paul’s mind. “I think that they didn’t understand.”
                “Pretty sure they understood. They just don’t really want their town smashed up any more than it already has been” Paul counter-pointed as the leviathan slowly clambered to his feet once more. As John’s head moved away from the storefront Paul noticed several brightly coloured bags of snacks and sweets, sundries which had been displayed near to the door, and a cardboard cut-out advertisement stuck to the suckers like oversized confetti.
                “You can't take those with you. It's stealing.” Paul thought desperately. The last thing they needed was yet another reason for John to be feared or reviled.
                “I want them. What is stealing?” Before waiting for a response, he rummaged through Paul’s vocabulary and memory to get his own answer. “Oh. I see. I still want them.”
                “You’ve just robbed someone, and you want people to believe that you mean no harm. You must see the problem with that.” Paul reasoned, logically.
                Looking the human directly in the eye, John pondered this point whilst slowly and casually wrapping one chin tentacle around a nearby lamppost.
                “I can see that it will need to be explained.” The leviathan finally compromised. As he transmitted the thought, Paul heard the wrenching of concrete being broken, and the lamppost rose up, gripped in a tentacle with fragments of pavement dropping away from the liberated end.
                “Put that back please.” Paul requested.
                “I would like to keep it.”
                “You can't.”
                “How do you propose to stop me?" The towering leviathan asked curiously, the question coming from all of his height, his claws and his terrible muscular bulk.
                Paul was stumped. He had no authority or power over the titan, something which was fairly obvious to him, and then to John when he listened in on Paul's contemplation.
                “That is a relief, but a little disappointing. I was looking forward to seeing what other powers you had. If taking snacks upsets people then I will refrain. I am keeping these ones though; they're already stolen.”
                “And the streetlight?”
                “Also already stolen.” John informed him, wiggling the relevant tentacle a little and dragging loose cables across the pavement.
                “A sea monster, party deity, destined to rise up once our race has withered, comes to the surface early and does what? Ram raids the bloody supermarket to steals crisps and infrastructure. You're a leviathan of untold strength and power but you decided to hop into some petty theft of snacks as your first act on the surface.”
                “This theft of snacks has caused you more distress than the footprints I have left in the road.” John observed.
                Paul's thoughts stuttered. John had a point there, and there was no use in denying it; the leviathan was in his head after all.
                “I shall relay the message to your contemporaries myself” John declared, although Paul had no idea where he’d found the term contemporaries in his mind “and then they will see reason. I think it will take time for you to be an effective word-spreader, but that is alright.”
                “Prophet.” Paul thought, in an attempt to reduce his cumbersome title.
                “Word-spreader is better.” John insisted.
                The leviathan’s lurching, ground-quaking strides, on ancient legs better accustomed to the rushing of deep ocean currents, once again shook Widding as he proceeded along the high street on a direct vector towards the assembled and displeased crowd. He was shocked and impressed at how loud these semi-aquatic wailers could be when they all wailed together, syncopated and out-of-tune as they were. Ever more volume erupted from their wail-holes as he approached. All he needed to do, he told himself, was say hello to them all like he had done to Paul, and they would surely stop worrying. If he’d been able to domesticate the first wailer he’d come across so easily then surely the rest would follow suit.
                In several directions at once the crowd started to flee, just like Paul had done. John reached out with his mind.
                “Hello. I am John. I have risen to the surface early to see what has manifested since the start of my dormancy. My brethren are still slumbering. My presence does not signal your doom or downfall this time.”
                A chorus of thoughts sang back to John from the crowd as they, for a brief flash, were of a singular mind.
                “This time!?”
 
                “Are you special among humans, Paul?” John asked interestedly as he carried his tiny, domesticated wailer back along the high-street, and away from Widding, in one open palm. “Especially calm?”
                Paul didn’t think that was the case in particular, and John picked up on that reaction.
                “Strange. The other wailers are far less accepting of me.” The leviathan said. Paul shrugged. It sounded like typical behaviour from Widding; turning people away because they were different, or several storeys tall, or had destroyed the high road and stolen some party food. He thought silently for some time about his opinions on the people of Widding.
                “What are ‘racist fish-god haters’?” John finally asked, at the end of Paul’s mental tirade.
                “It’s… a figure of speech I’ve just invented to cover what happened there.”
                John shrugged mentally.
                “This settlement, this Widding, you think of it as a minor, insignificant place. I wish to see the grander constructions of your empire. I wish to see one of your great cities.”
                Every filament of Paul’s nervous system, declaring themselves extensions of his brain and therefore capable of thought, screamed that John visiting a city was a terrible idea. Awful as the people of Widding were, it was likely that the majority of the population would emulate their behaviour under these circumstances.
                “You are of a common opinion that I should stay away from further settlements?” John asked, almost incapable of ignoring the very clear signals being sent by Paul’s thoughts.
                A low, stuttering roar drifted in from the North and distracted Paul from responding. He recognised it immediately as the sound of a helicopter, and it sounded like it was getting closer. Usually the sounds of rotors in those skies were from lifeguards darting out to sea to save some capsized sailor or distressed surfer, and as much as Paul didn't like to wish that someone was drowning, he hoped that it was the case that time.
                “Helicopter? That sounds exciting!” John thought excitedly.
                Another raid through Paul’s mind-turned-library only escalated John’s enthusiasm.
                “You have created the means to surge into the sky? You semi-aquatic wailers grow ever-more intriguing. Can I ride on it?”
                “I don’t think that’ll work. It’s not really big enough.”
                “A larger one can be created.”
                Paul’s lack of aerodynamics knowledge failed him. He knew that the demi-god was rifling through his mind like a filing cabinet of poorly arranged letters, but a conclusive answer as to why he couldn’t be given a giant helicopter wasn’t forthcoming. The engine noise and rotor sounds were much louder now, and Paul scanned the skies for the source. Heading in was a small white helicopter, banded with red text running along its chassis, and very much not a lifeguard.
                John stood perfectly still and looked upwards at the approaching aircraft, enraptured by his own curiosity. Sitting on one of his palms, Paul was rather at a loss for anything to do, and so he was forced to also quietly watch the helicopter close in. Occasionally he was forced to duck a tentacle as it swung gently from John’s chin, but thankfully the lamppost was safely dangling on the other side of the vast squid-like head.
                Slowly the helicopter decelerated and came to a hover, a few dozen metres away from and above the leviathan’s head. It dawned on Paul, when he saw that the lettering on the aircraft formed a nonsensical three-letter acronym, that he was looking at a news copter; the terror was about to spread impossibly quickly. With disappointment, Paul accepted that he was going to become famous as either a herald of the apocalypse, or a damsel in distress being held hostage by King Kong the giant fish man.
                “You are not distressed.” John observed. “And you don’t seem to fit your own definition of ‘damsel’.”
                “That doesn’t matter to the media.”
                After a quick review of what the media meant to Paul, John shrugged with acceptance.
                “It seems strange to pay for someone’s lies. There is a lot to learn about you wailers.”
                “You might be better off staying ignorant to it.”
                “Either way your empires will fall when my brethren walk the earth again. It doesn’t bother me if your people behave strangely.” John said by way of comfort. It didn’t bring much. “I will investigate this helicopter myself if it will not be coming closer to me.”
                Before Paul could even think that he didn’t like that plan, John was striding towards the news copter, like a child chasing a dropped tennis ball which happened, in this instance, to be levitating. Wobbling in the air, the helicopter started to attempt to bank away and maintain some distance, the pilot apparently panicked by the gigantic monster closing in on it.
                “Everything runs away up here. I mean no harm.” John protested.
                “Whether or not you mean it, when you start crushing walls and plants in your effort to reach a helicopter, especially with a lamppost dangling from your face, people are going to be scared of harm.”
                John’s telepathic voice boomed out again, injecting a message directly into the mind of anything in a generous radius.
                “I am not going to hurt you. Let me catch up with you; you are interesting.”
                If anything, the helicopter increased in speed.
                Older than recorded history, more powerful than humanity could imagine, and still bearing a distinct aroma of seaweed, John wasn’t going to be outdone. Paul tumbled backwards across his palm and gripped onto gargantuan scales as the leviathan lunged forwards into a run; the overgrown puppy had been given something to chase.
                Wind whipped at Paul’s face and clothes. Every pounding footstep vibrated through John’s body and into his unwilling but ultimately powerless passenger, bouncing him across the great palm and testing his grip on the leviathan’s scales. Under his breath at first, and then so far over his breath as to be shouting, Paul cursed the news helicopter for continuing to flee horizontally; all it had to do was fly upwards to get out of the way and then this whole situation would be resolved.
                Against the wind rose more engine noise, and Paul was pretty certain that it didn’t originate within John’s mammoth frame. Being in a giant scaled hand, tumbling around uncontrollably and clinging on for dear life, the luxury of looking around for the source of the new noise was unavailable. When a shrill siren joined the engines, however, he understood perfectly well what it was without any need to look at all.
                In his peripheral vision to either side, which was a wide arc given the size and positioning of his eyes, John saw bright flashing lights flickering in red and blue at varying distances. They chased along his route, running vaguely parallel to his path and keeping pace as best they could, just like the bioluminescent shrimp and fish from the abyssal darkness of his oceanic trenches. In years long gone they had swum with him as he charged across the seabed with his brethren, navigating the reefs, sheltering behind the rocky ridges, and warming themselves from spewing vents of superheated water. Perhaps these new luminescing friends were descendants of those original shrimp, clearly symbiotic with humanity due to their own, even louder, wailing sound.
                An abandoned, or perhaps simply parked, tractor found itself compressed into a more easily stored but less easily driven shape by one of John’s impossibly huge feet. It had also been pressed into the soft ground, which would do no good for the growth of future crops. Such concerns were far from John’s mind, however. Carving a path of inadvertent destruction across the coastal farmland, he was finding a surprising amount of joy in chasing the news helicopter. With light frivolity that he would scarcely have been able to enjoy if this world above the waves had been moving through the winter of its decay, John bounded across farrowed fields, over or onto walls, and through anything in the path of his feet.
                Above, John saw yet more lights closing in; the shrimp had even evolved to fly! Such wonders had the surface world to offer that he was beginning to feel sad for his brethren, missing out on such splendour in their insistence to rise only when Armageddon was a historical fact, and not just future speculation.
                John burbled excitedly despite himself, showering both the ground below and Paul with seawater which had been resting in his almighty cheeks. As the skylights grew closer he saw that they too were what Paul’s mind deemed to be ‘helicopters’, rotors whirring away in their own rhythm, out of phase with the original news copter.
                Excited to learn more, he plunged back into Paul’s captive mind and searched for the evolutionary path which led shrimp to becoming aircraft that needed to be assembled by humanity. Following the thread of exciting red and blue flashing lights, John found a markedly different interpretation from the semi-aquatic wailer’s knowledge base; one of panic, danger, and having to ram his car up a kerb, whatever that meant. According to Paul’s understanding of the situation, the lights were pursuing John, not running with him, and they were controlled by other semi-aquatic wailers who sought to control the leviathan and stop him spreading destruction. They even, apparently, would assume that he was trying to eat the first helicopter.
                John mulled this over, still sprinting after the helicopter and reaching upwards with one arm like a great river of flesh. Pursuers wouldn’t run alongside him, they would chase behind him like the ancient megalodons had done when they hunted their prey, which was most other things in the ocean aside from the leviathans. And any hunter would know that wailing in such a way was of no use when trying to sneak up behind something. Not even the whales with their relentless singing would boom out a call like that when feeding. These wails sounded far too ‘whoopy’ and happy; Paul’s perceptions must have been tainting the truth behind such jolly, bright lightshows. They would discuss the matter later.
                For several miles John continued running merrily, leaving an insurance claim nightmare behind him whilst the police cars wound their way through narrow country lanes in an effort to keep pace. More than once they were stuck behind roving groups of cattle, sheep, or farming machinery, as is traditional for countryside travel. It was at least some comfort that such obstructions could continue despite the disruption and terror of the sea-monster’s presence; the farming community wouldn’t be put off so easily.
                A grey shape in the distance started to loom larger. It had started as a vague smear across the landscape, before realising that smears are scarcely useful for anyone and deciding to gain some height. Once height had been adequately manifested it set to work on resolution and detail, giving the tall grey forms some kind of definition and identity. After this concerted effort, John finally recognised the nature of such grey pillars extending towards the sky, nowhere near scraping it but probably the best that these semi-aquatic wailers could do; he was approaching one of Paul’s famous cities.
                Along the grey web of roadways leading away from the grey concrete pillars more of the red and blue flashing lights screamed towards John. Their numbers were far greater than the few which had been escorting him thus far; he must have stumbled across a nest of some sort, and now they were all piling out to come and play. John’s excited happiness bled into his telepathic probing, infusing Paul’s mind with a warm contentment wherever it probed. This came as something of a shock to the terrified human who was still clinging onto the leviathan’s scales for his life. As they gambolled along he had managed to wedge his hands and feet underneath separate scales and support most of his weight, but it was scarcely a position he could relax into. Now, the never-ending tide of fear and panic which had been rushing over him carried an eager exhilaration, and an anticipation of good things to come. It was the first time in his life that he’d thought of panicking crowds and hostile emergency services as ‘good’.
                John was mesmerised by the rectangular stone structures which the semi-aquatic wailers had wrought. Reflective surfaces adorned the outside in regular grid patterns which he assumed must have some special meaning, one which would hopefully become clearer at close proximity. Hundreds more cars just like Paul’s were rushing through or lining up along further roads, with non-flashing yellow and red lights at either end. John preferred the flashing red and blue, but still appreciated that a static glow was quite pretty.
                Weaving through those rows of cars came yet more red and blue flashers. It seemed that they were the only creatures, or vehicles if Paul was to be believed, that wanted to get closer to John rather than running away from him. It was flattering, but he still wanted to catch this white helicopter; if he stopped running now then the game would be over and he’d risk disappointing it.
                Suddenly, like a peal of thunder from nowhere, a boom erupted from the direction of the roadway ahead, loud enough to shake the very earth and break up the rhythm made by John’s feet. Accompanying it was a red-yellow flash at ground level which cast long, brief shadows across the ground to either side.
                With a sound like a hammer striking a leather anvil, something heavy and metallic crashed into the leviathan’s right thigh, ricocheting off harmlessly like the deep-sea crustaceans from his dormancy.
                Feeling the curious sensation, John slowed down and came to a halt, lowering his head to peer at his leg. There was no sign on his scales of any harm or disruption, nor any sign of what had crashed into him. Shrugging his great shoulders, he saw that the news copter had kept going and gained even more of a lead on him, but the red and blue flashing helicopters had maintained an even radius around him, hovering in a circle and apparently waiting for him to do something.
                John peered down at Paul, who seemed to be significantly distressed and somewhat dishevelled from their journey.
                “Did you happen to see what crashed into me?” he asked curiously, as if he was asking whether Paul saw an interesting documentary on the news last night.
                “What… you were just shot! You got shot by a tank! Get out of here! This is why you shouldn’t have come to a city!” Paul replied, doing an impressive amount of shouting without using his voice.
                Another boom sang out, a shockwave in the air rustling the grass verges all around, and a second metal slug slammed into John’s facial tentacles.
                “Hm.” John assessed. “Was that the same thing happening again?”
                “Yes! How are you still standing?”
                “It’s only a tickle. I’m not very fragile, don’t worry.”
                Paul could feel John trying to project the feeling of a smile, in lieu of the correct facial structure or muscles to actually pull one off.
                “What are tanks, by the way? And what is being shot?” he asked excitedly. Paul knew better than to try to formulate a response; John asking a question was basically just a courteous notification that he was about to go rustling through Paul’s memory again. The same wave of strange contentment swept through his neural pathways again, giving him a lot of previously unfelt affinity and affection towards armoured warfare and projectile weapons. Even the prospect of getting shot in the street started to feel like something he would quite look forward to.
                Waiting for John to finish fishing for information, Paul noticed that a third shot didn’t seem to have been fired. Whether they’d noticed that the first two rounds had not had any visible effect, or if they were just happy that the leviathan had stopped Paul couldn’t know, but he was grateful to be out of the firing line for at least the time being. Risking a little motion now that his platform wasn’t swinging around uncontrollably and the risk of being struck by a pendulous lamppost was minimal, Paul crawled to John’s fingers and peered around the edge of one.
                Directly ahead on their road, a military roadblock had been constructed, complete with concrete blocks, metal tank-traps like enormous caltrops, and of course a neat formation of armoured vehicles extending across the roadway and surrounding grasslands. All barrels were trained upwards at different spots across the leviathan’s body, which didn’t give Paul a great feeling about his own safety.
                “I can feel you worrying, Paul.” John thought with almost paternal concern. “These ‘tanks’ are surely only playing with me, and they’re quite incapable of hurting me. Please fear not.”
                “They can very much hurt me!” Paul protested, feeling that John had perhaps not quite grasped the full nature of his concern.
                “They aren’t shooting you though.”
                “I don’t think they’re quite that precise, and it’s not something I want to test. Get me away from this!”
                “But what if they keep trying to play? You’d be in just as much danger and they’ll have hurt feelings too.” The leviathan told him, unaccountably worried about the feelings of the tank commanders on the ground below, given that they’d just bombarded him with heavy ordnance.      “STAND DOWN CREATURE!” A loudhailer bellowed from above amid feedback and electrical noise. It was coming from one of the police helicopters hovering nearby.
                “We need to leave now.” Paul pleaded, jumping up and down on John’s palm in desperation to accentuate his point. Having shaken off military attacks, he didn’t know why he thought John would notice a small man jumping.
                “Does something about cities upset you?” John enquired, now fully abreast of the military armour situation.
                “Being shot at! We’ve been over this.”
                “I could doom them? Then there will be no more shooting.” John correctly noted. He really thought that he should make use of his dooming capabilities at some point.
                “No! No we are just leaving.” Paull overrode.
                “But it all looks so interesting. It would be a shame not to investigate a little more now that we’re here.”
                “We had a deal! You said you’d look around Widding and then keep away from towns.”
                “This was an accidental visit. And we had to leave Widding early anyway because of all those other wailers getting agitated.” The leviathan complained.
                “There are far more wailers in there, and they will get may more agitated than the people did at Widding. The wailers in the tanks, specifically.”
                “Are they also racist fish-god haters?” John requested, for clarity.
                “They certainly seem that way. We’ll be better off somewhere else, somewhere…” he racked his brain for a way of keeping himself safe. “…somewhere without people. A national park, a site of beauty!”
                “What is…” John started, not even bothering the finish the question this time. “Oh, they look strange. It would be a shame not to see those before the doom of this planet corrupts the land and turns every corner of the earth to grey dust.”
                “Yes… yes it would.”
                “I will say goodbye. That is something you wailers do, I have learned from your brain.”
                John stretched up to full height and raised his free hand. Another tank shell immediately crashed into it, the deafening boom ringing out across the landscape. John didn’t seem to mind.
                “I am going to see a waterfall, because they look pretty and Paul here says that you would prefer for me to leave the city.” His thoughts pulsed outwards like a radio signal, arriving directly into the minds of every human in visible range. “I’ll come back and visit another time when it’s more convenient for you. Goodbye.”
                With his already raised and slightly shot hand, he waved amiably at the tanks, and then at the assembled helicopters.
                “Wave goodbye, Paul.” John prompted.
                Uncertainly, Paul waved at a few of the military vehicles, wishing he was holding a white flag rather than an empty palm, and then braced himself for another walk.
                “Did you like that? When I said ‘when it’s more convenient for you’? I learned that inside your head. You think it sounds polite and makes people happy.”
                “It was great.” Paul agreed, ignoring his own thoughts that John has missed the point of leaving the city entirely.
 
                As they journeyed away from the city and across the country over the following weeks, a military escort was never far behind. Sometimes it would be an armoured column from the local garrison, other times a formation of jets circling around and helicopters floating nearby, and very occasionally a hot air balloon would bob in the vicinity, but that didn’t seem to be a military asset. From time to time a shell would be fired from a nervous first-timer, or when John looked like he was getting too close to something important or expensive, but he took it as good humoured playing. Paul was mercifully successful in stopping John from playing right back with a boulder or rooftop.
                Under Paul’s vague guidance, mostly formed on the fly from road-signs they happened to be able to read, the leviathan stamped a course across the undeveloped land between cities and townships. They stopped at anything which sounded like a place of natural beauty or somewhere that Paul could sleep comfortably, and took in the sights that life and circumstances had otherwise held at bay. Occasionally, Paul wondered if he still had a job. The newspapers had quickly picked him out and identified him - living on the hand of a demi-god from the sea generates that kind of interest - so his employer would definitely be aware that he wasn’t just pulling a sickie. Without knowing when this grand tour would end, however, must have made it difficult to decide on appropriate shift cover or disciplinary proceedings.
                Such thoughts were far from his mind, though, whenever they were overlooking a glorious vista from the dales, watching a waterfall cascade into the rocky pools below, or marvelling at how many lampposts John could snatch up in his tentacles before Paul noticed. Patchily dark streets often followed the leviathan.
                On the whole, naturals wonders fared better under John’s impossible bulk. Paul was able to convince him to stay off soft, delicate ground or plant life but standing on cliffs and mountains was palatable and permissible, even if the odd webbed-foot impression was left for the archaeologists of the future to ponder about.
                Eventually, the military escorts started to decrease in size until, one day, they were finally left with only a single helicopter hovering nearby. Booming from a loudspeaker, it made a declaration.
                “Paul and John. A final decision has been made, I repeat, a final decision has been made.”
                Paul, who had been trying to direct John away from seeing how many cattle he could fit into his gargantuan mouth, turned to face the helicopter. The sounds of rotors were effectively white-noise these days, and he had almost forgotten that the escort was there.
                “The leviathan has been monitored for several weeks now, and we have concluded that he is fairly harmless, for something so inherently capable of causing great harm. We are willing to cease our escort under one condition.”
                John reached out into the speaker’s mind and learned this condition long before it could be spoken.
                “We accept.” He communicated, making rather a presumption on Paul’s part.
                “Accept what?” Paul asked urgently.
                “Be about your business.” The loudspeaker confirmed, apparently contented to take John’s ‘word’ and assume consent on this matter.
                “Accept what, John?” he thought a little louder.
                “Bye! Take care. Mind how you go.” John projected back to the helicopter. He liked those phrases from Paul’s mind.
                “What do we have to do John?”
                “Hm? Oh, it’s nothing. You just have to remain as my word-spreader. They would like for you to act as my guide and keep me away from destroying any kind of cities or suchlike, but that’s easy because I don’t want to destroy a city anyway. And you like being my wailer.”
                “You could at least have asked me to make sure!”
                “I knew you would agree. I have been in your mind and know that you’d be scared of saying no to the army anyway. And without a wail-amplifier to respond, I had to answer for you anyway.”
                Paul couldn’t argue. Not ever, in fact. Sometimes he wondered if John was tinkering with his mind to prevent a disagreement, but other times he feared that he just liked being carried around by the damned fish. With a shrug, he sat down and hoped that the conversation had at least distracted John from filling his mouth with cows. He had done, it turned out, until Paul’s thoughts reminded him.
                With the military gone, and a compromise reached on the cattle issue, they set off again on their travels, this time with a cow in tow on one of John’s face tentacles. They set it down regularly to do its business and eat some grass, and on the whole it didn’t seem to mind.
                Soon enough, the travelling band picked up a different kind of escort. It seemed that a pressure group had been formed which sympathised with the leviathan, and sought to grant him free passage to live and learn as he desired. The so-called ‘Friends of John’ had been petitioning for military harassment of the gentle, if destructive, sea monster to be ceased, and for the country and the world to show him compassion and understanding. When they finally came close to the leviathan and communicated this to him, the telepathic waves of contentment were so great that several people suffered severe face-cramp from involuntary smiling. The cow didn’t stop mooing happily for three days.
                Accepting Paul as their mortal representative and word-spreader, the Friends of John brought him gifts and requisite supplies to sustain his lifestyle as the nomadic prophet and minder of the leviathan. John could feel Paul’s apprehension to trust the Friends of John, especially those who seemed overzealous. In the word-spreader’s mind he saw images of poisoned food, coups to take his place, and agents of harm who hid among the Friends of John in order to sabotage the leviathan.
                “Fear not. I can see their thoughts and feel their intentions. I will keep you safe from the Friends of me, should any of them seek to trick you.” John informed Paul one morning, as a care package was handed to him.
                “Didn’t you read my mind and decide that the military meant you no harm whilst firing on you?” Paul replied sceptically.
                “Petty details.”
                “So all this stuff is definitely safe then?” the human asked, looking into the jute bag full of snacks, toilet roll and hand sanitiser.
                “I detect no malice or deceit from that squashy-faced wailer who gave it to you.”
                “OK. Just be sure not to call them squashy-faced directly or some malice may well come to life.”
                John scanned around the assembled crowd of people, many of whom were wearing white T-shirts with a photo of the leviathan on the front. Several camping chairs had been set up to make their assembly more comfortable, thermos flasks steamed gently in the cool morning air, and woolly hats were very much the in-thing. Feeling for any sign of threatening behaviour towards Paul left him mercifully empty-handed, but he did detect that several of the crowd had intentions of rolling him himself back into the sea.
                “I am quite capable of walking back into the sea when the time comes, but thank you for the helpful intention.” He relayed to those responsible. Their blushing cheeks stood out against the white shirts.
                “Come along, Paul.” John then transmitted to his word-spreader. As with questions, John’s instructions were strictly matters of courtesy. Before giving Paul a chance to come along at all, he plucked the tiny man up with two clawed fingers and placed him neatly into one palm.
                “I believe we were heading north.” John said, orienting himself with the Earth’s magnetic field lines. He was a natural compass, which Paul was learning to appreciate, since without regular access to charging capabilities for his phone navigating via John was the only shot they had.
                “Just a little to the left though, John.” Paul nudged. He felt, in his distinctly human way, that it would be better to set off on a path across an open field, rather than ploughing straight through the electrical pylon providing power to the whole village. Repaying someone’s hospitality by plunging them into darkness was a habit that Paul was trying to break the leviathan out of.
                “Hm. Yes. The important little wires.” The demi-god accepted. “It’s a good thing you’re here.”
                “In a manner of speaking.” Paul deflected. He had no idea how long he would have to spend riding on the hand of an ancient monster from the deep sea, nor was he sure that John would remember to let him off before walking back into the sea. But he knew that the word needed to be spread, if only to keep the electrical infrastructure in place. At the very least, it was nice to be needed.