Though he generally preferred the term "interlocutor," D'Augustine knew he was lying to himself. Three years of law school, four of post-graduate studies in the history and language of Atlantis, and he was a goddamn shark lawyer. Not just that, he was a lawyer for the most hated shark on Earth. Where did he go wrong?
He watched Whunruuuyuu pace ceaselessly back and forth. He knew the fish hated it here. And why wouldn't he? It was the perfect prison, nowhere to go. But beyond that: they'd stuck his cage in a low and rolling plain, a place absolutely lousy with horizon, that sharp boundary between land and air an almost perfect breeding ground for constant existential crisis in any fish.
D'Augustine had come to discuss Whunruuuyuu's appeal to the International Tribunal. With time served he could get off for good behavior. Back under the waves again, maybe this time in the Pacific, away from his victims. There was a dead fish head on D'Augustine's porch this morning. Again. At least it wasn't thrown through his window this time, strung to a brick.
They had a long conversation in Old High Sharkese that Whunruuuyuu tried not to broadcast to the other prisoners crammed in the little zoo with him. The focus of D'Augustine's appeal was the general condition of the prison, so full of other inmates. Afterward, he went to the booth to make the necessary calls.
He would do his job, to the best of his ability, and if that meant more fish heads, well, it meant more fish heads.
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