A is for Aboleth

A is for Aboleth, the abyssal ichthyoid.

Whenever you're wading in the water, especially when the waves and sand and silt and murk make it difficult to see, and you feel something slither against your feet, that's the Aboleth.  Some say it's enormous, the size of an island, or maybe even an entire continent, swimming down in the crushing depths.  Others say it's man-sized, swimming around on translucent jelly-like fins.  Is it a creature of brute strength, sucking ships down to the bottom of the ocean with its tentacles?  Or a creature of domineering mind, drawing strange souls to the ocean to stare for hours, looking, searching for something they don't quite understand?

The Aboleth is the song that beaches the whales, it is the sting of the man o war, the broken bottle in the surf.  The Aboleth is patient, and ageless.  Eternal as the tide, the Aboleth waits for prey to draw near.  A gelatinous body with a hundred eyes, all stinging tentacles and toothed suckers, a mind as unfathomable as the depths.  There are castles on the ocean floor, palaces and labyrinths and dungeons and spires and canyons, and it is here the Aboleth makes its home.

The Aboleth is what you can't see and what you don't know.  It is what you fear may be in the water, the slime on the bottom of your foot, the brief flutter against your leg.  You can't see it, you can't know it, you can't find it.  It sees you.  It knows you.  It finds you.