Chapter 2: Princess

The particulars of my capture in those wild waters of eastern Maine elude my memory altogether.  From dreams and from the tales of others, I have, in my modest brain, a sort of piecemeal mishmash of what might have taken place.  Late at night, in the cool waters below, my mind spins and tumbles with visions of medieval iron-spiked crayfish traps and a horrifying loss of innocence.  Only the crayfisher knows what really happened.

What I do remember is a healthy bit of frantic clawing, and then splashing into the confines of a tank.  Then turbulence.  Then bubbles.  Then floating particulates.  When the water cleared, I gazed through the glass and saw her...Princess.

She was not of my species, and she was mysterious.  Her body language was alien to me, yet familiar in some intangible manner.  Perhaps in the wild she would have been my competitor or foe, but here, through the two panes of glass, her visage spoke to me with a kind of intrigue--a kind of allure.

Only rarely could I catch sight of her, as she would only move about when she believed herself to be unobserved.  I have included a single apt photograph from our time in the same laboratory.  Such glimpses were the very inspiration that guided me through those first weeks of captivity--yet they would be my undoing, for there was another who eyed her as I did, and he and I were destined to meet.