next part of CHAPTER 1: meet Keera (third part)

the FIRST part of the Chapter 1
SECOND part of Chapter 1

Keera [pronounced key-AIR-uh]

Born of a human mother, the only life she'd ever known was that of the manatee.  Her mother had boarded a hired motorboat with a group of other women who had completed thirty-five weeks or more of their pregnancy.  EVery woman who boarded paid a large fee to ride that death ship.  The women were being taken to unburden themselvesin the Gulf of Mexico.  Some were already in active labor, as with Keera's biological mother.  Others were being hooked up to stolen IVs that would feed synthetic hormones into their systems and cause them to give birth too soon.  All babies born were either born directly into the water, as was Keera, or thrown overboard as soon as they were born into the hands of one of the male ship's owners.  This practice had occurred long enough that the manatee knew and watched.  There were too many mothers losing their calves.  They yearned to nurture.  Even a human.

Keera was held above the water by the cow that eventually became her mother.  Each cow in the group that night, as with many others before and after, held a baby above the water.  Not all of the cows were in milk, but they worked together to save the babies that would live so that those who had lost a calf might have a baby to nurture.  They'd done this long enough that they knew what to do and how to do it.  The first humans saved were accidentally rescued.  Generations had passed since the beginning of this new race of humans.  The rescue meetings became a regular event in the lives of the manatee.  With each new moon, the manatee watched the dock at which the death ships docked and signaled to their sisters, who waited at the dump sites, whether there would be any possible rescues that night.

The adult humans first rescued by the manatee came to be an integral part of the rescue effort and enabled the manatee to rescue alive more of the human babies than they had before that first generation grew to adulthood.  Keeku, Kwee, Eea-eat, and other Mabsoners were not specifically aware of the human to animal genetic manipulations that had transpired for generations prior to their rescues by manatee.  Had they known, they surely would have been grateful for it was those experiments that enabled their race to change rapidly to suit their environment.

Some babies, like Keera, never cried after their birth.  The shock of the water, though considered warm by water-dwellers, was far too cold for the tiny bodies of the babies and prevented some of the babies' cries.  The submersion of Keera's tiny body in the too cool water changed her body-system immediately.  As a result, she, and all the other rescued human babies, were able to live in the water for the majority of their lives.

A few of the dumped babies did cry out.  The humans on the boats did not care.  They never even considered how it could be that they might hear a baby cry once it was disposed of.  They trusted that the child would die soon enough.  They were sure the water or sharks would take care of the mess they were creating.

As much as Keera knew she should dislike or even hate the humans who had obviously disposed of her, she refused to hate them.  Instead, for the whole of her life she was fascinated by their ways and their language.  She loved to watch them and hear them.  Even though it was extremely unsafe, she had, on rare occassion, left the water to try to stand as she saw them do on their boats.  In every free moment that she could steal away, she felt magnetically drawn to them and had, with great effort and straining ears, learned how to speak as they spoke... sort of.  She's never had anyone with whom she could speak the human language, but she loved the way it sounded when she spoke it anyway.

Now, as a beautiful, though far too thin for a Mabsoner, 12-year-old Keera was watching over the new manatee cow-mothers who had recently lost their calves and who were hoping to rescue discarded human babies.  They were organizing off the shores of Pensacola, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico.  They must have things in order because the moon was right for a dump.  Keera was hopful that the mothers who had just calved would be able to bond with a new one who would live.  Month after month some of them tried, only to be disappointed because the human babies they caught could not survive in their world.

Keera worried about her family; both the other Mabsoners and manatees.  Those who looked something like her were always in danger of discovery and those that had taken them in and blessed them with more life than they otherwise could have experienced were decreasing in number.  The number of calves lost each calving time was astounding.  Somehow, though, the manatees survived.  Miraculously, it seemed to Keera.  The manatee's numbers were decreasing regardless of the effort the Mabsoners put forth to guard and protect them.  They could do very little most of the time for fear of discovery.  They all, manatee and Mabsoner alike, knew that if the Mabsoners were discovered the humans of land would not be pleased.  They didn't like to share the world with each other or the other animals in it.  Surely they would be severely displeased to learn of a new kind of human.

The worst the humans of land could do was kill them all.  And since they knew of at least one Mabsoner murdered by a human, they preferred to err on the side of caution.

© 2008-2012 Tori Gollihugh All Rights Reserved

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