And that was part of the tragedy: I had just started to know her. I was mourning the relationship that could have blossomed but didn’t have a chance to grow.

Had a person attempted to taste me so soon after we met, I would have been alarmed; but since Athena was an octopus, I was thrilled. Although we couldn’t have been more different — I, a terrestrial vertebrate constrained by joints and bound to air; she, a marine mollusk with not a single bone, who breathed water — she was clearly as curious about me as I was about her.

Always somewhere there is fire or smoke, insistent reminders of the greed consuming the world

Isn’t this what we want to know about those whom we care about? What is it like, we wonder at each meeting, in shared meals and secrets and silences, with each touch and glance, to be you?