In stories, were such an event to occur, there would be comic thrashings. I would have attempted to slap myself awake from a dream with my inadequate fins. There would have been a flopping struggle across the bedroom carpet to look at my dolphin-face in the bathroom mirror. But none of that was necessary. When you awake and you are a dolphin, the wet gray fact is immediately as clear as the fact of the dawn in the window.

I often felt myself out of place in my previous life; to tell the truth, the physical transformation was, if not expected, then at least not unwelcome, even something of a relief.

I lay still for some time, fanning my fins, holding in mind each new muscle, one-by-one, along the whip-curve of my spine. As the dawn became day, I became aware of an entirely new sensation, a slight but insistent itching, almost a buzzing, just above the surface of my skin. A delicious, whole body thirst. Once I'd named the feeling, I needed to be within water.

There was no use in delaying the inevitable—I would need human assistance; I had to alert my family about my condition. The words I attempted to call out were, of course, the squeaks and clicks of my new nature, but they were adequate for the moment's purpose.

My father came first, and quickly, the tie around his neck half-tied, his hands still working as he eased open the door and saw me. His hands dropped. He left, retrieved my mother, who put the tips of her fingers to her mouth, and understood.

The less said about the transport from my childhood bed to the backseat of the Volvo, the better.

In the driveway, there was some conversation about water temperature and bridge traffic as my parents leaned together over a map in the front seat; I will miss such moments, overhearing my mother and father making a plan, describing something that was not yet true that would become true. I will miss my parents. I will miss looking out and up to dark green trees in a car window. I will miss gravity. I will miss my little sister. She let me rest my head on her knees during the drive when my mother insisted. At first she wouldn't look at me, but then she did. She tapped on my forehead with the tips of her fingers, like I was piano keys.

It is not correct to say that no part of me lamented the transformation. But the lamenting part of me was the human part, the remnant, the part standing with my family on the edge of the wet part of the sand, watching the strange silver creature, the dolphin, that had flashed into their breathing space from waters endless as sleep now returning to those waters.

The remnant can keep his fingers and his family, his new socks and his summer air. I will keep these waters, these new motions, this voice.