2014-10-11 - 7:59 p.m.

Harmen the mouse lived in a tiny coffin at the bottom of the sea, so that bubbles was all that he could see. No sunlight, but predatory beasts that lurked beneath cold waves. So Harmen's worldview was skewed by the dark, by the wet, by the predation that occurred all around him. Harmen saw sharks lapping up their prey, and creatures grotesque with mouths especially built for lapping up death and other debris. So Harmen the mouse became something new, he shed his outer fur like a tiresome garment, became slippery and slick like the things around him. His gills grew slits in his neck and his long tail grew to the width of his body until Harmen at last was a fish. His jaw was cartilage and his tiny body a vessel for mercury and cold blood. His eyes grew wide and moist, lidless and without an eyelash. And as things grew in the murky deep, things like kelp wet and flapping with the current, so too did Harmen grow, day by day, more like a fish.