A Little Memorial to the Humpback Anglerfish

One lone humpback anglerfish wandered in the never-ending darkness beneath the Atlantic’s crushing depths. Her brilliant appeal was a small flickering bioluminescent light, in the great emptiness; she had spent her whole life in the dark abyss. But somewhere deep inside her, she longed to know another world above, a world of brightness.

She swam slowly, painfully upward. The water became lighter and warmer. She passed strange but brilliant creatures with glistening scales in colors she had never seen.
Her little body shook; these were not her natural surroundings.

Still, she kept swimming. Golden light shone brightly. It illuminated her dark form as it washed across the ocean. She floated at the surface, the heavens unbounded above. The warmth embraced her delicate body, a calm, magical moment. The strain she had known all her life vanished.

But her little body could not hang on, as she was accustomed to the crushing deep. Her light flickering for one final time, and then she sank gently.

The sea greeted her home, murmuring, You reached the light; you were never meant for it, but you did it! And that is sufficient.