Squid

Once a sailor set to sea to fish.  He cast his line out far, and when the bait hit the water immediately he felt tension.  Surprised, he began to reel in the line, and he saw that he had caught a squid.  As the catch came closer to the boat, the sailor noticed that it was a squid known not to live near the surface.  The sailor was certainly in thought over this, but everything was blown out of the water as, when the squid was flopped onto the deck, it began to speak.

"Thank you!" it expressed in perfect English.

"You - you're welcome," came the automatic reply from the flabbergasted fisherman.  He observed the squid, lying there with its famously large eyes, staring unblinkingly up at the blue and cloudless sky.  It was a beautiful day.  "Uh -" the sailor began.

The squid sidled one eye to look at the sailor.  "Probably you want to know why I'm glad to be caught."  The sailor could only swallow and nod in answer.  "Just look at the sky," the squid said, returning his eye's gaze to the blue above.  "It's so.... peaceful.  It's so majestic.  It's so quiet, and there's so much to read in it."  Though the sailor could never later recall how, it seemed to him that the squid smiled.  "The thing is, I'm in love with the sky."

"The - sky?"  It was all the sailor could manage.  He was beginning to question his sanity.

"Yes, the sky," the squid sighed.  Then his voice began to pick up, and became almost reminiscent of an excited child.  "I love the sky.  I've spent my life near the surface, rather than down deep, so I could see the sky.  I'd swim down a bit, then shoot myself upwards and out of the water, and watch the eternal sky as I fell back down."  The squid's face became downcast, and his voice followed suit.  "But I don't know if the sky even cares.  It's so - so big, and so far above me.  It's of the heavens, and I'm of the depths.  Does it even know I exist?"

The voice of the squid was such a rhythmic sound, and the tone almost melodic, that enough of the fisherman's fear had melted that he was able to think about what the squid was saying, rather than just the idea that it was saying at all.  The forlorn quality in the squid's speech made the sailor want to console the squid, so he tried, "But surely the sky is big enough that - I mean, it must be that the sky, being so heavenly, can - what I meant to say, is, your love is sure to be strong enough that -"

"It's okay."  The squid sounded defeated.  "There's nothing you could say.  There's certainly nothing you can do.  Just...." a wistful ellipsis was audible.  "Just let me look at the sky, here on your deck, until I die.  It won't be long.  You can throw me back, or keep me and sell me, but until my last moment, please just let me look up."

The sailor had no words after this, but stepped back to give the squid peace.  He felt embarrassed to watch the squid, as if he were looking at someone bathing.  So his eyes wandered across his little boat, until they found themselves overboard, grazing the top of the water, reaching the horizon, and climbing the dome of the sky.  He ended with his head full back, looking straight up, so that his full field of view was of the blue that was the sky.  There was no sound except the wind lightly kissing his ears.