>>5397577>>5397579>>5397580>>5397583>As a gentle wave brushes its front, a Flounder Feeder snaps its pincers together and presses them there, tensing for a minute. There’s nothing to swallow, so it stops and goes back to floating. Its pincers show no signs of damage, where many generations ago, even this little stress would cause a visible fracture. They are still riddled with chips and dents from its predatory lifestyle but they are smaller, shallower than before.The Flounder Feeder’s success in avoiding starvation long enough to reproduce leaves very little selection pressure on their pincers. There is some, naturally, as the weight of time hangs heavy on nonexistent shoulders, but it comes gradually and the change is only minor. More time is needed to finish thickening the cartilage, more generations, more incremental improvements built on millennia of strife. Such is life beneath the ice, in the hateful glow of the crimson star.
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