Chapter 24

Growing up in the Lagoon of Dreams on the Amazon River was everything a being such as I could ever dream of. My days were often spent in the company of Maggie or with my Terran father, who I’d learned was a renowned ichthyologist, scouring the bottom of the lagoon for any traces of the lungfish that had once called this place home. Their existence dated back to the Devonian era, a hundred and fifty million years ago, and they seemed to have been as comfortable on the land as in the water.

Other times our days were spent with the big, green Brachi who was my other father. He taught us how to coexist with the inhabitants of our little slice of paradise, to distinguish predator from prey, and to protect what was ours.