He lifted a foot, shook off a strand of seaweed, and waded back toward the mangroves. The frenzy would come again. Tomorrow. Next week. The moment the next chunk of bait hit the water, the call would sound, and Kael—patient, grey-feathered Kael—would answer it. Because in the rapid rush, there was no past, no future. Only the beak. Only the now. Only the frantic, beautiful, bloody business of staying alive.
But the frenzy was turning. The water was beginning to glow pink with blood. The smaller mackerel, gorged and stupid, started to flee upward , breaching into the air where the gulls snatched them. Kael felt a sudden, cold pressure against his leg. A shadow. Not a fish. A shark. A blacktip, no longer than his wing, but built of pure gristle and bad intent. It didn't want Kael. It wanted the fish in Kael’s shadow. feeding frenzy rapid rush
The frenzy had a rhythm. The bait ball—a frantic, silver sphere of sardines—would dart left, and the predators would correct, a single, pulsing super-organism of hunger. Kael was no longer a bird. He was a needle, a dart, a piece of shrapnel. He stabbed again. This time, his beak closed on a soft, wriggling body. He swallowed without tasting, his throat working like a pump. He lifted a foot, shook off a strand
He saw the mackerel first—a wall of silver muscle, their mouths agape, slamming into the bait ball from below. Then the jacks arrived, torpedoes of fury that broke the surface in screaming arcs. Pelicans dropped from the sky like feathered anvils, their pouches swelling grotesquely. Gulls shrieked a war cry, turning the air into a blizzard of white wings and yellow beaks. Next week
It started with a single swirl—a dark shape coiling beneath the glassy skin of the lagoon. Then another. Then ten. Within seconds, the placid blue erupted into a churning, white-water apocalypse. This was the feeding frenzy: nature’s chaos engine switched to “overdrive.”