Photo Shoot

         There is a word for a time like this. When I first thought of this idea for the photo shoot it had seemed brilliant, unique, even artistically clever; I had images of hearing praise but now as I look up at the surface above I knew there was only one word to describe this swim.
         Stupid.
         A few minutes ago, I had stood on a sixty foot size boat resting upon the Pacific Ocean, just about thirty miles west of San Fransisco near the Farallon Islands, A deary place by trade yet that day it was a rare and calm. Quite misleading. In one moment, to take my mind off the task I had been about to do, I had looked to the north towards Point Reyes where my heart had been stripped and stomped on. Maybe that was what drove me to plan this deadly stunt. Fish my heart out of the deep blue sea.
          My cameraman climbed into the heavy plastic tube beneath the crane before it was lowered overboard. I just dove in without cables listening to the crew above call me colorful names and well wishes.
         As my retrospect shifted to my current sense of being, I found myself admiring and fearing what was around me. We were not alone in these waters, Gliding past was an animal of grace and beauty. An eighteen foot great white.
         Stupid popped into my head then. Followed by that nasty swear word I heard above.
         My cameraman started clicking away. Although the shots were not ones we planned, I didn't blame him. I understood his way of thinking. Get what you can before she gets eaten.
         The Farallons were one of the last places on Earth to view a great white shark with little to no human interference. Naturally being in the water with them, besides being a death sentence, was harassment and possibility illegal as the islands themselves were a wildlife refuge. As it was we were already inside the restricted zone of water around the islands. A crime in itself.
         Crime has no meaning here.
         This was the other side of paradise. Dark, seductive, and yet still peaceful.
         All this as I swam in light circles I took it all on.
         Another shark swam by. Closer. Slower. As it passed I scanned the body and wished I was laying back, relaxed. She, it was certainly a she, moved like my ex lover. Suddenly I was in love again. I missed her deeply then, she had been another woman who had been bonded to my soul. To have the void filled in my heart by a creature that awakens primal fear is a sensation I wish I could describe with words greater than this.
         I reached out and touched the shark as she passed.
         Click
         That was the shot we came for. Although I never heard the click, I felt it. All of this just for a photo to grace the back cover of my next album. A album called Great White. An album about emotions. Fear. Love. Trust.
         The shark balked and dashed forward fast. I wasn't wearing gloves and her chevron covered hide ripped my flesh.
         Blood in the water.
         Instantly the cameraman called for a pickup and the crew began to reel him in. Beside of him, I pressed my hand to my body and rose fast towards the surface. Suddenly the tube seemed to jerk out of the corner of my eye and was yanked a few feet. I looked above the tube. I saw the shark above. My shark. Tangled in the cable. She must have circled back because of the blood.
         The crew above was fighting with the cable with due to the shark's weight. I looked her over. It tighten around her.
         Life.
         Death.
         Love.
         Trust.
         Hell. I swam up the cable to her and forced my fingers and arms onto the cable and pulled. To best get a grip I wrapped myself around her body. Along side her face I looked into her eye. Behind the instinct, behind the hunger, something flashed. A fear. A understanding. Only for a blink of a second if not that. I cradled her as I pulled and she came free. Her body glided out from under me leaving a void greater and deeper than I felt before. We had shared something. She knew. Instead of turning again to attack, she raced away with a passion only given to those who dance with death and lived.
         Somehow I surfaced and was hauled onto the boat before being stripped bare in front of everyone. Hugging the shark had caused my suit to be ripped across the chest and as someone dabbed ointment across my breasts, I looked out across the sea.
         A single dorsal fin was headed towards Point Reyes.

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(After edit)
Word Count via WDC: 819