Once there was a small village near a deep Sea full of quiet and beautiful people. The people in the village loved the Sea, for it gave them all that they needed. Each morning they would rise with the Sun and take their finely made boats out onto the water, which was still and clear as glass. The people would cast nets into the Ocean, and when they pulled them out again, they were full of silver-scaled fish and wet green sea-weed which was also good to eat. The children in the village could spend ages searching along the white sands of the shore for bits of coloured glass or certain magic shells which would whisper to them. The most skilled men and women in the village could conjure up strands of silk from the Sea, which prosperous people would wear on special days. Just as the people loved the Ocean, so it loved them. It would always take care to pull in the hems of its watery skirts, so as not to sweep away their dwellings, and there was many a time when it would gently bear a lost child back to shore.

But deep in the heart of the sea there were kingdoms and villages, just as above, and in one of these kingdoms lived an evil Prince. This Prince’s name was Nocta Luca, as his father’s had been before him, and he had eyes as cruel as the jagged rocks and a heart as mutable as the tides. He hated the people in the village because he was jealous of their harmony with the ocean, which he considered his domain. And so he made a very wicked plan to drive the people back from the shore and into dry land for ever.

Firstly, Prince Nocta Luca decided, he must align as many members of the sub-aquatic nobility as possible with his cause. So he began to circulate his sentiment among Dukes and Lords, slowly but surely stirring up the notion that the people in the village above were taking away what was rightfully theirs.

“The land-dwellers are far too bold,” Nocta Luca would say, his webbed fingers twitching in the water as he spoke. “The whole Earth belongs to them, and yet they want our Ocean ? I say it is just presumptuous.”

“That is nonsense ; they only love the Sea as we do, and do not wish to take it away from us at all,” cried certain, more gentle nobles ; but every now and then somebody would find themself nodding along as the evil Prince spoke.

After a time, the Prince had amassed a small number of supporters, and then he could really carry out his plan. To begin with, he appealed to his Cousins, Lord Pedino and Lady Mona. These nobles were unremarkable from their demure, gloomy clothes to the triviality of their land and titles, save for one thing : the brother and the sister both possessed the power to control the sun-light. Pedino and Mona were not cruel, exactly, but they were starved for love, and Nocta Luca deftly applied all sorts of flattery until they agreed to join his unsavoury cause.

After Pedino and Mona, Nocta Luca turned to his eastern neighbour, Count Diox. This Count was terrifically strong with muscles like cords, and he was also remarkably clever when it came to the mechanics of war. Prince Nocta Luca was rather afraid of the Count, but he would never have admitted it, and he had absolutely no qualms about completely embarrassing himself in his pleas for Diox’s support. The Count, though at first impassive, was won over quite easily in the end --- he was very eager for a battle, after a long and drowsy period of peace. And now, Nocta Luca thought with no small satisfaction, it was time to begin his siege on the people of the village above.

When the day was warm and the wind just right, Prince Nocta Luca brought his Cousins close to him, and whispered instructions into their ears. Their three heads --- two plain and sad, one sharp and ostentatious --- bent together, and with a great effort on all their parts, the Sun began to dim slightly in the Sky. Mona and Pedino grew pale and drawn, but Nocta Luca’s eyes and the tips of his fingers began to glow with a strange blue light. The Prince steadied himself and began to move his hands dreamily in the water, conjuring up impossible clouds of this same blue light which now glowed throughout him. It was not solid, but it bore him aloft, while his Cousins watched solemnly from the Ocean’s floor.

“Where shall we go first, Diox ?” Nocta Luca said in a voice that was unlike his own.

Count Diox stepped forward. “If we take the western current, we shall reach every corner of the shore.”

“Then let us go,” the Prince ordered, and was swept off in his luminous tempest while his minions scurried behind.

Prince Nocta Luca was intoxicated by his newfound power, but his focus was still sharp as it was terrible. Every time he saw a creature of the Sea, no matter how big or small, he would strangle it with a tendril of blue light. “Now the people of the village shall starve,” he cried in triumph.

“Have we not been worthy subjects ?” cried the Fish. “Please, do not kill us !” But Nocta Luca did not hear, and he continued on his parade of Death. In terror, some of the Fish swam for the shore, but no better fate awaited them there ; they were swept away from the water, where they drowned.

“Now the land-dwellers will have no fish to eat. They will have to leave the Ocean, and we shall have it to ourselves,” crowed the Prince. And he looked so grand that his followers were inclined to agree.

The next morning, the people of the village made their way down to the water’s edge, nets in tow. But they all stopped short when they saw the rows of fish that had washed, bellies exposed, onto the white sand.

The people were all very grave, for the sight made them sorry, until one man yelled, “It is a miracle !” Then they erupted in cheers, for it was indeed true that there was now no need to go out onto the water in the blinding sun, and cast their heavy nets below the waves. Only one young girl, called Litore, stayed quiet, watching the dull silver glint of the Fish’s scales as her people gathered them up. “Doesn’t it seem wrong ?” she asked, but her mother shushed her.

“Look !” someone cried, pointing out at the horizon. In the distant mist there, the blue light of Nocta Luca could just be seen.

“It is a sign of love from the Ocean,” everyone said, and fell to their knees in thanks.

When Nocta Luca heard this, he was very angry, for he bore no love for the villagers, and did not like the sign of his power to be mistaken as such. But after he had raged a while, and frightened Pedino quite thoroughly, he began to laugh. “They do not even understand their misfortune,” he said, his voice still strangely touched. “Soon they shall see.”

The people spent two days in a great and golden celebration, praising and thanking the Sea for its good graces. Only Litore was not merry. The distant blue light on the horizon filled her only with dread. After the feasts had been finished, the people became very languid and easy, and nobody much wanted to go down to the shore, and so they ate the dried fish from their winter stores until it ran out.

Nocta Luca thought this was very funny. In fact, it became his regular habit to observe the goings-on of the land-dwellers, and so he was very near to the shore with his blue lights when they finally came down to the Ocean’s edge again. The people came without their nets, for you see they expected another miraculous harvest. When they found the shores barren, there was a general hush, and reluctantly they set out on the water again. But after hours of casting their nets and finding them empty, the people were beginning to worry.

“Can’t you see it is the fault of the blue lights ?” said Litore, but she was chided for being so blasphemous.

“We must have done something to displease the Ocean,” the people said, and they beseeched it to answer them so that they could right their wrongs. But the Ocean was still reeling from the death of its children the Fish, and sick off Nocta Luca’s luminous poison, and could not speak.

Prince Nocta Luca watched with the most twisted of joys as the people in the village began to starve. He was so entertained by the cries of the hungry children and helpless mothers on shore that he stayed up late into the night to listen to them. Before long he was not sleeping at all. But he did not seem to need it, nor did he take food or drink, or entertain much company. He was still full of that alien light, which seemed to take over his being more and more each day. Mona and Pedino grew quite afraid of him, and even Count Diox did not like to be in his presence for longer than was necessary. In fact, no one in the underwater kingdom felt very kindly towards Nocta Luca, and a few of the nobles were beginning to wonder where all the other creatures of the sea had gone.

Litore could not rest. While the rest of her village lay faint from hunger, she summoned her strength and went to the water’s edge each day to try and find out what was causing the blue lights. Some days she thought she heard voices coming from the depths, though it could have been her empty stomach echoing in her ears. Once she saw the lights come very close, and they would have touched her feet if she had not jerked away, trembling. In fact, this was Nocta Luca, attempting to strangle her as he had the Fish, because her inquisitive nature was annoying to him. Litore’s face grew pale and hollow, and her hair went thin. One by one, her family and her friends began to drift off to that pale country Death. Still, she returned to the Ocean each day, beseeching it, asking it what her people had done wrong. And finally, one day it seemed to her that the Ocean had heard, because a strange voice whispered into the blushing nautilus-shell of her ear, and she understood what she needs must do. With much sadness, she gathered her belongings and her strength, and set off across the mainland, leaving the shore behind.

When Nocta Luca saw this, he laughed out loud in petty victory : “At last, the little urchin is gone !” Litore was indeed sad to leave the Sea, but she held her chin up, knowing that what she had to do was big and important.

For three days, Litore ate berries and chewed on twigs in the depths of the great Forest, walking a little each day until she reached a village on the other side of the shore. There she was given food and drink and a warm bed in which to sleep, and once she finally regained her strength, she gathered the people of the village in one spot and began to speak.

She told them of the mysterious arrival of the blue lights. She told them about the dead Fish on the shore, and the way her people shivered and starved. She told them of the evil voices she had heard, and of the weakness of the once-great Ocean.

The people in the new village did not understand the blue lights, either. They did not understand why her Fish and her people had perished. But they listened to her stories, and they kept watch for the blue lights, and when she eventually grew very old, and passed away, the children who had known her agreed amongst themselves that they must always remind the younger ones, who had not. And the people on the island took special care always to love their Ocean, and be prepared to protect it, if the lights should appear. And so they lived for many years more. They still did not know what to do about Nocta Luca, who, as far as I know, still lies sulking beneath the waves, and has not shown himself yet on the western stretch of shore. But if he were to come back, that cruel and petulant Prince, I am sure that they would fight.

n.b. Prince Nocta Luca is a representation of the Noctiluca cell, which forms Noctiluca scintillans, the phytoplankton which has been ‘blooming’ in the Arabian Sea.  

Pedino and Mona come from the full name of the Noctiluca cell’s endosymbiont, Pedinomonas noctilucae.

Count Diox is a representation of carbon dioxide, the compound which Noctiluca scintillans is nourished by.

Litore is from the latin for shore.