Poseidon stands at the tide line where the Mediterranean meets the shore. A whale carcass sprawls before him, ribs exposed through torn flesh. Plastic nets cut deep into bloated skin. Oil slicks shimmer across the waves that brought this ruin to his feet. He lifts his golden trident, commands the current to pull the body back into clean water. The ocean does not respond. He tries again. The trident grows heavy in his grip. The waves roll past the carcass without touching it. They break around the corpse like it no longer belongs to the sea. Poseidon drives the trident into the sand. The shore should split. Coastlines should shift. Nothing happens. The weapon that carved the Mediterranean itself stands inert, just gold and weight. A ship hull scrapes against rocks a hundred yards down the beach. Dark paint, rust-stained deck, nets piled high with torn mesh. Poseidon walked the ocean floor to find it. He dragged it through currents that would not help him, muscles straining against water that felt like stone. The poachers abandoned it days ago. Their boot prints still mark the sand where they fled inland. The ship lists to one side, a monument to what mortals do when no one stops them. Poseidon stands over the whale's body. Plastic bottles spill from its mouth. A mountain of trash drifts just past the breakers, too large to sink, too foul to dissolve. He reaches for the familiar pulse of the deep, the current that has answered him since the world began. Silence. The ocean has no voice. The sea that is him, that has always been him, turns away. He pulls the trident from the sand and begins to walk toward the mountain of refuse. If the water will not obey, he will drag every piece of mortal filth to shore with his own hands until someone answers for this.