Swimming was for losers. Anybody could just swim with the sharks or the dolphins or whatever school of fish just happened to be the hippest, coolest, most now, whatever. She really did not care. Her life was short, she had no intention to make some dumb alliances for survival. It was all about sightseeing, baby. Learning languages, ocean history, depth magic and sightseeing.
She had read somewhere that her species was supposed to be quite intelligent, but live only for about a year or so. That sounded quite frustrating at first. Just one year is not a lot when one takes into consideration the age of the entire planet. What could have also worried her beyond that was the fact that she was not really sure about her real age at the time of this grim discovery. For all she knew, she could have been eleven months already. What was she to do?, kill herself now, or maybe enjoy the last 30 days or so, or 60, or maybe 300?...
It was after her 7th summer or so when she started to ask herself why she was not yet as dead as predicted by all those who themselves were by now gone?... why did she not want to swim?, why was the the only one that really looked really like her?...
She was not quite sure about the reasons, and maybe the reasons were not really what she was looking for. She now somehow had the idea that it might be simply time to leave the ocean... (and I think she did just that...)