For a time. But with nature being what it is and sharks being sharks things perhaps were never as they seemed.

For if fish could cry and Bouilla had known that, as she played or slept, her lover was visiting with her sisters, without pleasantry in mind, the sea would have been a saltier place those loving days.

And perhaps she did know, for what you don't know and refuse to accept can never hurt you until you stare it in the eye and for many moons she never did.

One such moon, should Bouilla have had the time to stare, things might have been different but the reefs were dark and the water heavy.

Bouilla played alone below that moon for it was all she ever really did besides dancing at her great king's behest.

She should have smelled the blood, or felt the tumult as the great white feeding frenzied down amongst the reefs. She never saw the now soulless eyes, with only blood and hunger to fill their gap, nor the teeth she'd grown to love come down around her but the great white knew.

Perhaps he caught the pearl-like memory upon her scales or perhaps he recognised the flavour of the one he loved, after so many nights denying his own dreams, but he swallowed love whole and kept her finally and truly for himself and his remorse.

The shark struggled on awhile, convincing himself that the company of his soulless peers was rewarding and the endless routine of sleep and slaughter satisfying. And as so many of us, he soon came to realise that it is better to have never loved than to love and to lose.

And so, as the shaman strips his side and whispers in his ear promises of the many fish, many other delights out to sea, the shark wails his reply, "The pearl fell for Bouilla alone".

Knowing that, however many fish, however much sea, there will never again be a careless lad, a magic pearl, an innocent sea bass and a shark with a soul on a summer's day made for love.