Re: Water creatures.
Hmm. Total brainstorm here. Might be meaningless to you.
Swans are graceful in the water, extremely elegant, and very foul tempered (or maybe fowl tempered, ha). They are capable of flight, and they have extremely powerful wings. There are records of swans actually killing grown men with wing buffeting, but it happens rarely. On the land, they waddle, not as awkwardly as some birds, but much more awkwardly than they appear in the water.
Seals are graceful and powerful in the water, but quite awkward and slow on the land. Also there's a possible pun here, a "seal" as in "seal of approval" or "seal of acceptance" or "seal of government", etc.
Crabs have a hard shell on the outside, and strong claws, they have an odd walk (the sideways shuttle you mentioned). Also a possible pun is to be "crabby" (grumpy, irritable). Sign of the zodiac. Tasty, if you're not veg/etari/an, but difficult to get to the tender meat because of the shell.
Ducks, like swans, can fly and are graceful in the water, but have a pronounced and awkward waddle on the land. They're noisy. Other associations are metaphors such as "like water off a duck's back" and the one about how underneath you're paddling like mad (that applies to swans, too). Possible pun in the sense of the verb, to duck (to quickly lower your head or body so as not to be seen or to avoid being hit with something).
The water, itself, may have some meaning. Water has various associations, more than I can recount, but I think of water as an environment, one very different from that of a land-based animal. Very often, creatures that are very much at home in the water are quite out of place on the land (and vice versa, of course). Also the association with life, with birth, with refreshment, with baptism (i.e., spiritual cleansing). Water can also erode mountains, given long enough, yet is entirely fluid, with no inherent shape of its own.
May the light surround you, may you be blessed. May the light surround us, may we be blessed. May love and light surround us all, and may we all be healed and blessed. And so it is, and so it shall be, now and ever after.
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