Overworked wage slave Lin Xiaoyu dies suddenly on the job and opens her eyes as the most unremarkable little carp in a pond. In these waters of the beast world, where the strong prey on the weak, she spends every day anxiously dodging predators. Then she meets an elegant, aloof white pelican. Unlike the other waterbirds, he doesn't chase after schools of fish. Instead, he often stands quietly by the water, sometimes dipping his long beak beneath the surface to take her up into the sky and show her the sunset painting the horizon red. He calls her “Little Moon,” and she calls him “Big Pocket.”
They become each other's most special companions. She loves soaring above the clouds in his beak and seeing the world from every direction. He enjoys watching her chase his reflection underwater like a silly little thing. But Lin Xiaoyu doesn't dare tell him she's a transmigrator, much less ask: pelicans are natural fish-eaters, so why has he spared her?
Then one day, an aggressive heron, an old acquaintance of the pelican's, blurts out the truth: the white pelican isn't a vegetarian. He's temporarily unable to fish because of an injury. As he recovers, he needs nourishment, and Lin Xiaoyu is nothing more than “emergency rations” he's keeping in his pond. Her trust crumbles in an instant. Lin Xiaoyu sinks to the deepest part of the water and refuses to surface again.
After three days without food, the usually reserved pelican dives into the water in a desperate panic for the first time and gently scoops her up in his great beak. He doesn't eat her. Instead, he sets her on a lotus leaf and says softly, “Little Moon, I'd rather starve to death than lose you. From now on, I won't eat fish.”
For the sake of one little carp, a pelican gives up the instincts of his entire species. And the little carp decides to teach her pelican that the world holds gentler ways to be together than “eating or being eaten.”
