At night, he dreamed of that eye staring back at him—ancient, unreadable, yet filled with something beyond instinct. He woke often with salt in his throat and gratitude in his bones. Survival felt less like luck and more like a gift granted by an ocean that could easily have taken him.
Years later, he lectured students who leaned forward, rapt. “It was not hunger. It was mercy,” he told them, voice carrying the weight of tides. Some smirked, others believed, but all felt the gravity of his conviction. His story lingered, unshakable as the sea itself.