I wake before the sun stirs. Beneath the water, time moves slower. It hums. The deep currents are my lullabies, the distant screams of the jungle my clock. The world above is already moving—monkeys cackling, birds shrieking their joyless songs. But I remain still. Eyes open. Heart slow.

The light pierces the surface around mid-morning, stabbing through the canopy like a hundred silver knives. I don’t fear the light. It’s the eyes of man I avoid. They come with nets and tanks and chemicals. They smile when they kill. I never smile. I’ve never needed to.

By noon, I rise.

My webbed claws pierce the silt as I push off the riverbed. The weight of water is my armor. I drift past garfish and the bleached bones of past intruders. Once I watched a man drown—he didn’t know I was watching. He splashed. Cried. Then went still. I didn’t touch him. Didn’t need to. The water did my work.

I break the surface just enough to taste the air—humid, rot-sweet, alive. The jungle is a furnace. I smell every reptile and mammal within a half mile. One of them—a jaguar—is watching me from the bank. Smart. He doesn’t drink yet.

I crawl onto land briefly, feel the dry world peel at my skin. The sun cracks my scales. I hate it, but I need to know. Need to see. They were here yesterday—men with cameras and steel traps. The woman was with them. Her scent still clings to the reeds.

I saw her swim once. Not like a fish. Like a flame. She didn’t belong here—too soft, too pale—but she moved like she was born in water. I followed. Close. Quiet. I reached out… and she screamed.

They fired guns then. Hit me in the shoulder. I bled black into the lagoon for hours.

They’ll be back.

By dusk I return to the cave. My cave. Carved by ancient floods, hidden behind a curtain of vines and lies. Inside are bones. Fish, men, birds. I don’t eat the men. Not usually. But sometimes… when the river runs dry and I smell nothing but gasoline and deceit…

The night comes fast in the Amazon. Shadows stretch and finally fold. I breathe in the quiet. Down here, no one remembers what I am. No one tries to define me. I just am.

They call me a monster.

But I only kill to survive. What does that make them?

Tonight, I rest.

Tomorrow, I rise.

And if they come back…

I’ll be waiting.