Jorge was raised on the island of Cabo San Lucas. When the Great Blackout hit, when he was just a boy of 13, the island adapted. Its fishing expanded…the only hope they had of getting food when imports from the US ceased.

Whales began to be hunted for their oil. Squid for their ink. Dorado (a kind of green fish) for their supple flesh and nourishment.

Jorge became the harpooner of one of the island’s hunting boats, the “Dorado” (named after the fish it hunted most), and grew into a strong and hearty man.

Eventually, however, the fish around Cabo began to dry up. Migrate elsewhere across the seas. So with the island starving, Jorge and his crew ventured out across the strip of Mexico, to the Gulf. To the New West, seeking to rebuild their meager nation into something greater, to migrate alongside the fish they relied on.

But one fateful week during the journey, the rations ran out. The crew began to starve. Even turn on each other in fights across the deck as tensions raised higher and higher. Then the storm hit. Waves as high as a man could see. Clouds gathered like anvils from on high. The breeze howling like a dog gone mad. Then Jorge spotted her, amidst the waves. A pale women, with a toothy grin. And desperate, starving, rather than listen to her strange, lilting song in a language he knew not, he speared her through the chest with a harpoon. Dragged her onto the deck thrashing and chanting. Carved her up with his crew and ate her. This strange woman, with the body of a scaled fishlike predator and a women’s face.

Turned her spine into the harpoon he’d use to bring fish in each day, to replace the rations for the rest of the journey. A harpoon which went deep enough into the depths to fish up what had been eluding them.

He feels guilty of course. Like he’s committed some great sin. But what other choice did they have. Starve?

The Kuliltu he consumed is fast becoming a part of him, under his muscle and bone…perhaps one day even binding him back to Father Kulullǔ or the Great Mother Tiamat herself.