Collaboration

    “I don’t see it,” he said.        
    She told him to scroll up slowly. She stopped his hand when the image on the screen was a blunt wedge and two flaps at the sides. “Whale head and fins,” she said again. She took control, scrolled down slowly so the eyes appeared, the strong bulge of jaw tapering to nose and mouth.
    “You’re going to animate this, make the horse head swim?"
    “Sperm whale and stallion, unsexed. Yes, swimming.”
    “Call it Sea Mare,” he said, “a bad dream.”
    “It’s going to paddle with those fin ears to the bottom and attach with its muzzle like a suction cup.”
    “How about making the whale horse translucent, add some flowers with long stems, that severed neck the top of a vase.”
    “Long petals,” she said, “wavering in the current like the tentacles of a hydra.”
    “Did you know the adult hydra’s called a medusa?”
    “Hydra, snakes. I can see that,” she said. “First the cut flowers descend and enter the mouth of a vase. The vase submerges, flower petals become the hydra tentacles become snakes, then the vase becomes sperm whale, elongates, and the camera following down to the horse’s head, the whole thing—snakes hydra, while, horse head—paddling to the bottom and the stallion lips clamping onto a stone, the eye lids blinking, the point of view shifting to the one horse eye which looks straight at the viewer. And then...”
    “It winks.”