Look at it. Look closer. Look at it move. Doesn't it seem like there could be a person inside? A melancholic, slow, lonely person who can barely remember he is a person at all. Waiting to be released from his grey, algae-covered tomb. Waving his arms slowly back and forth inside those ungainly flippers. Using his stiff, atrophied legs, stuck inside the tail, to propel himself through warm, clear water which dulls his senses and soothes his sorrow. Grazing on sea grass because that is all that the mouth on his fleshy sarcophagus can take inside.
He has been gone for many years, but his family - or descendants - still search for him. They think that a sorcerer or enchantress cursed him. They will do anything to have him found and rescued. They need a group of adventurers to do it.
oh the manatee
ReplyDelete...now his name is "hugh".
DeleteI hope you're happy :P
Ooh, or riffing off that idea: Ponderous, slow moving, concrete manatee golems, their stony hides impervious to mortal tools, festooned with deadly stinging barnacles, and trailing shreds of oily moss, carry the Sea King's treasures in their hollow bellies. Or his prisoners.
ReplyDeleteLike it.