The assault on the Sea People’s mating haze is a turning point in Sherzad’s story: it separates her from the ocean and her community, kills elders in her family, and makes the survivors change how they gather. Her eventual return with a child brings reunion and joy, but neither can undo the losses or restore the safety of their former customs.

The Attack and Its Human Cost

Sherzad was captured during the assault on the mating haze. Her brothers and sisters survived, but her mother, uncle, and aunt—all elders of the family—were killed. The account gives the aftermath rather than a detailed description of the attack: its weight falls on the surviving family, on Sherzad’s grief, and on the danger that remains for the Sea People.

When Sherzad is free in the ocean again, she mourns by singing phrases from her mother’s death-song. In that song she shapes an image of her mother looking upon her granddaughter, Sherzad’s child. Grief and renewal meet in the same act: the child has entered the family’s life, while the older generation whose presence might have welcomed her has been lost.

Return to the Ocean

Sherzad swims freely with her baby clinging to her. The child learns the sea’s ways quickly—how to swim, breathe, and settle into languor—and is introduced to the ocean among young cousins singing as they travel through it. Sherzad’s surviving siblings swim around her, eager to reach the deep trench where the Sea People gather for the mating haze.

Her return promises a welcome from other families, who will rejoice to see her again and admire her child. The gathering also offers a temporary easing of grief: children will play with tame giant octopuses and tease dolphins, while adults join the mating haze. These anticipated comforts show what the assault failed to erase: kinship, shared customs, and the community’s capacity to receive Sherzad back.

A Changed Gathering

The survivors will no longer mate beneath the sun. They consider themselves too vulnerable to the men of land, and too few remain to withstand another assault. The change is therefore more than a choice of hour: the attack has made a central communal gathering dangerous in daylight and placed new limits on how the Sea People can assemble.

That year, Midsummer Night coincides with the dark of the moon. The Sea People plan to gather at sunset on the shortest night of the year, rise together in darkness, and meet amid the waves, their bodies glowing in the night. Afterward they will not gather again for fourteen years, when the dark of the moon next coincides with Midsummer Night. The interval makes the celebration both a return and a measure of vulnerability: the community can still come together, but only under altered conditions and after a long wait.