******
The wool fish closed in. Astray looked up and saw a pink light in front of his face. It was a petal sinking to the seafloor. He saw no line attached; the line was made of water, invisible in the sea like a shadow in the night. The petal drifted past him, casting the jagged teeth of the flesh-eating scavengers in rosy light before they snapped their jaws shut.
His tail was pierced first, and he was suddenly being reeled away toward the surface. Below him, where the pink petal had just twinkled out of sight, the cub saw the ring of wool fish ramming their snouts into one another, all biting the same suddenly empty space at the same time.