Fish Out of Water (Open)

Moths may not have a great nose (did they have a nose at all?) but the sense receptors that covered their body were able to detect food and mates from many miles away. Females of some moth species can even the ancestry, age and possibly reproductive fitness of a male just from his scent. So Sati's setae were, no pun intended, nothing to sniff at, and they detected, as did her hair (which she smelled with she never got over that it was so WEIRD), a fellow shifter even through the sea-stench of the shark. What sort, he'd have to be closer and the shark gone from her scent-range for her to tell. Whatever he might be, though, she supposed she'd rather another shifter help her with the shark than a baseline human if she had the choice; he might have better strength or reflexes to avoid the snapping jaws, or a high-level healing factor to fix things swiftly if he didn't.

"Yes! Please! Thank you!", she called out in bursts, unable to take her attention off the shark for even a split-second, since she knew doing so would likely cost her a good chunk of calve-meat, and thus conversation wasn't going to be so eloquent with her at the moment. She stopped her backwards track in the sand so that the man could come over and get a hold of the shark's front end.

"Watch the teeth! He's a live one.", she advised the obvious. He was quite 'live' indeed, but his spasms were lessening in strength compared to just a bit earlier. They should probably get a move on getting some water in to those gills...

"Oof! Me either," she responded regarding the roughness,

"Bet the teeth are worse though, thanks for keeping that end under control."

Finally, she felt water on the back of her heels as she stepped in to the edge of the sea. Wonderful! There wasn't enough yet to put the shark down in, at least not for it to reach its gills properly, but a few more steps back...and a few more...

"I think we can put it down now," she said,

"At least to let it get a breath before we can get it to a deeper spot. Just hang on tight, alright? On three?"

On three, they did indeed set the shark down so that the water washed over its gills. The shark, which had been getting more and more still as they had carried it out further, suddenly sprang back to life. Too much life, as it happened--it began to struggle and thrash even more than it had before! Sati couldn't hang on, and, with a slight noise of pain as its skin scraped swiftly against her own, she dropped her end of the beast.

"Very sharky!", she agreed, sounding a lot less nervous about this than she felt.

And then the shark bit the man. She didn't think it had at first, that she was seeing things wrong, due to the whole lack of screaming and flailing and other overt signs of pain and panic from the man that one would naturally expect to occur when bitten on the arm by a junior sea monster and was still continuing to be bitten via clamping without release. If she'd been being told this story rather than experiencing it, she would have perhaps made the guess that he was in shock, but since she was experiencing it, her reaction was much less cerebral: she punched the shark.

It was not very effective. In fact, it was completely ineffective. The fish didn't seem to have even felt it. However, at least the time that it took to make the automatic punch had given her a few seconds for her brain to engage just a little more logically, and form a new plan of action, which was sticking her fingers in to the gills. She had heard that when being attacked by a shark, this was one of the few things that could make them let go. Whenever she heard it (which had been a few times, or read it--it was Miami, you would of course want to know a bit more about this than if you lived in, say, Iowa) she had always wondered just what was the point of getting the shark to release you? It would just bite you again in a few seconds, and if you had already been attacked by it and wounded, the odds of you being able to swim to shore away from it before then were just laughable. And who could even remember to do that when THEY WERE BEING ATTACKED BY A FREAKING SHARK?!

Now, however, she saw the use of this knowledge. It was not for when you were being attacked out in the open ocean by a big shark that wanted to eat you because it was big and could do that. It was for when someone near you in shallow water was being bitten by a small shark that was just scared and freaking out. Proof that this knowledge was for this situation? It worked. The shark released.

Sati's mouth released too, that is, released a stream of apologies to Aggie for having dropped the shark and letting this happen. She continued spilling her sorries as she grabbed hold of it again, adding,

"You should get back to shore, call an ambulance for your arm, I'll just drag him a little more ways out and then I think he can make on his own! Can you get to shore? Should I help you instead?"

Yes, yes, she should probably focus on helping him more than the shark, yes, priorities, calm down and remember priorities, just because this is the first task you were focusing on doesn't make it the most important, people over sharks, priorities, CALM DOWN.

'People over sharks' was not something that Sati would normally have to remind herself of. She was no great fan of sharks in particular, certainly not to that degree. But because she was freaking out over the fact that Aggie was hurt and it was her fault, her brain was indeed getting a little weird and going with the idea that the FIRST task she'd started MUST be the most important and therefore getting it done would fix things RIGHT? So a little self-reminder that NO IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY was needed, excuse her.

"Probably? I don't know?"

Probably was safe, or probably wasn't, she wasn't sure which she was saying. Would it 'frenzy' over blood when it had breathing to be concerned about? She'd think that getting away from the two humans harassing it would be its main focus and it would swim away once it had the opportunity, but she also knew that she knew very little about sharks. For all she knew, blood could make them so crazy they didn't even care about things like that anymore. But the guy had said to move the shark out a little more, and she could manage that, risk that, if he could, and it sounded like he would even if she didn't, and leaving him to finish what she had started just wouldn't be fair. Granted, thinking about what was 'fair' was probably not rational in this situation, but if she was being rational she wouldn't be doing this in the first place, now would she? It had been automatic when she'd started the task, and now that she had, it was probably best to continue it that way. Save the freak-out for when it was finished...at which point she wouldn't need to freak out at all because what was done was done. Nice how that worked out, eh?

Or would hopefully work out, anyway.

She wanted to say something to him, but was not sure exactly what, so she instead just clenched her teeth nervously and kept her eyes on the shark. When they had gotten it out further still into the sea, she asked if this was good. When he agreed, she prepared to release it,
"Here goes nothing."

With that, they let it go once more. As before, it thrashed, and it hit both with tail, hard enough that sati stumbled and nearly fell. In a horror movie that would have been terrible, but all that happened her backside got a bit wet. The shark simply swam off, glad to be back where it belonged. She stared for a moment in the direction it had gone, then turned her head back to Aggie and his wounded arm, moving to touch it but then halting herself,

"Are you hurt? I mean, I know you're hurt, but is it hurting?"

He didn't seem to be in pain, but he could be in shock. Was that what "in shock" meant? She didn't actually know.

....good grief, she was finding out today there was a LOT she didn't know, at least about sharks and shock.