There once was an adventurous mynah bird who dreamed of exploring the ocean...
One day she stowed away, on a drua setting sail from Suva. After some time she was discovered, and shooed from the vessel to struggle on her own above the vast blue beneath. She flew for miles and miles through salted breeze and over glimmering ripples, until she hurt for air and water, and could barely tell where the sky ended and the sea began. In a haze of blue she landed breathless on a floating triangle for rest...
This was not just any triangle, but the fin of a great reef shark. The shark was suspicious and wary, having spent a lifetime being feared or prodded by humans. The mynah was persistent and unafraid, having spent a lifetime as a trained scavenger. So, after some reluctance, the shark was won over and agreed to swim her back to shore.
On their journey they swapped stories of rejection and repulsion; of fishing nets and slingshots; of the loneliness of being misunderstood. They discovered they were both outcasts in a world of petty humans: one a monster, the other a pest.
But not in each other’s eyes...
The mynah bird returned safely to land, but soon found herself missing the rolling velvet of the ocean. Something had changed in her. She no longer felt as though the light skies and the trees beneath were enough. The next day she spied her floating triangle near shore, and flew out to find the shark waiting for her. You see something in that journey had changed him also, and he no longer felt as though the cool darkness and the sand beneath were enough.
They swam together daily from then on, and soon the mynah bird wished for nothing more than to lose herself to the ocean; and the shark wished for nothing more than to swim forever with her there.
And so one day, they both dived in.
Head first into the blue, the mynah bird fluttered her wings as hard as she could, downward and downward and downward. She flew for miles and miles through salted currents and under glimmering ripples, until she hurt for air and water, and could barely tell where the sea ended and the sky began. And in that haze of deep blue, the most wonderful thing happened. Her feathers turned leathery with salt water, and as her beak gasped for air near the bottom of the sea, she felt her shark by her side and lost all fear. With his razor sharp teeth he carefully grazed her cheeks, both right and left, to make gills for her to breathe.
And so it was that her two great loves, the majestic shark and the Pacific Ocean, helped deliver the adventurous mynah into a brand new world of blue. You can still see her to this day, flitting along the water where the sky ends and the sea begins: a glistening flying fish, forever flirting with the sharks...
