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Reflecting the rays of the sun and splitting them into a rainbow of hues across its surface, a vast drop of water sped through space. Held together by a magical meniscus, this globe had stayed intact for light years, though its size had diminished as life-giving fluids were imbibed by its bizarre occupants. This was the craft of Mermo.

At its heart floated a luminous shrimp. Attached to navigation systems by a spaghetti tangle of tubes, the shrimp used its many legs to manipulate a pool of controls. Each touch sent forth a ripple that subtly altered the space-drop’s course. It had travelled across enormous distances, but the ship could not afford a collision with a solid body such as a comet or asteroid on its path to Earth.
Beyond the shrimp rested a monstrous creature as large as a whale, yet scaled like a fish. Its saucer eyes glazed over as if it were meditating or stretching its mind over a distance. The patterns on its flesh blended and spread like films of coloured oil. It was a display that indicated the creature’s mood. For now, flushed with pale blue, it seemed at peace. Eight tentacles on the head teased the water around them like antennae, seeking information on the environment. Messages from all over the space-drop could be transmitted within the ship’s fluid. The tentacled mass was listening. The colours across its body flushed green as it picked up a signal from nearby. Its eyes became alert and the tentacles twisted into activity. A message was relayed to the guiding shrimp. The space-drop paused and revolved.

Three millennia had passed since Mermo last came this way. Now his disciples were once more in need of salvation.

A pod of fluid spilt from the space-drop and fell towards the blue planet below. Much of the spill evaporated on the descent in the heat of entry into the atmosphere. But inside, Mermo’s ambassador remained cool.

A school of millions gathered to receive the visitor in the second largest of the planet’s many oceans. Three thousand years was but a drop in the ocean to an ancient creature like Mermo, but for the creatures of this world much had changed in his absence. The amphibians had crowned a new leader and threatened the peace between salt and freshwater. Buildings had risen above sea level. Children were being born without gills. Fish had stopped believing in Mermo. They cast doubts upon his essence and put their faith in hydro-science.

The ambassador was troubled with this news. The return was much overdue. He hoped that the believers on Earth would not have lapsed as far as the heretical amphibians of this world. A lesson would have to be relearnt.

The school of a million believers circled the ambassador as he linked to the minds on the space-drop in orbit. The tentacled being at its centre made a grave judgement and instructed the shrimp navigator to approach the planet.
From a tower on a slim peninsula, a perched green figure, more upright than the frog it resembled, squinted in the sunlight. He inflated his air-sac and croaked an alarm to the land-dwellers below. The frogmen in the streets looked up, then leapt about in panic as a globe of spinning colours appeared in the sky.
Many, whose belief in the one great fish-god had been denied, kicked aside their shoes and fled to the coast to seek forgiveness. Families gathered in the damp, yet air-filled temples. Some pleaded with the icons of the blessed toad for rescue. More tore down the holy images, hoping for mercy. The sphere in the sky was an omen long foretold, but unprepared for.

The mightiest underwater beasts gathered in rows as instructed. They surged forward towards the most populous amphibian cities and they accelerated. The great globe in the sky passed between the sun and the land and where once was blue sky, a rainbow spread. The pull of the space-drop already tugged at the oceans. At the deepest levels, the tides turned in one direction and began to build.

The frog sentry on his high tower watched the space-drop approach on its second orbit. As it neared, it ploughed a path through the ocean below. Waters either side rose to a height that hid the clouds. The frog gave out one last croak to his ancestors, having given up on gods, then he leapt from his post onto the hard soil far below.

Then the tsunami hit.

Any relic of amphibian civilisation was washed away in seconds. Churned around and ground between the bricks of their buildings, the frog culture was crushed. A young empire was demolished. Any wall still standing below the waves was bulldozed to dust by the whale-like warriors that swam in lines, directed by the great mind inside the space-drop.

As the oceans levelled, Mermo’s ambassador led a service for the devoted and those who had returned to the fold in fear. Though his visit was brief, the effect of Mermo’s wrath would last another three thousand years. The word would spread from generation to generation. Legs would turn back to fins. Gills were back in the ascendant.

A waterspout span out of the sea and carried the ambassador back to the space-drop. The billions of sea-dwellers covered the surface of planet of water to watch the floating drop shrink to a pinpoint as it left them for another millennium or three.
At a command, the navigating shrimp resumed the space-drop’s course to Earth.