The Enclosing One was working, and it was thinking. The tangle of increasingly large cellular thread that had woven itself into the ocean was a problem. It was disturbing. Yes, of course, the walled life it was creating would not be bothered by floating hazards in the long term, but the species was too deep to begin drawing strength from the sun and the sandy bed of the shallows were dominated by the fractals and their various predators. [i]...Not all the shallows are vacant. The calm spaces I have covered, yes. Could the stones of the shore where the wind is fierce be colonised? Nourishment in the state that they consume now is short and my power is stretching.[/i] Yet, all great movements had to begin with a single push. With an odd feeling of nostalgia, the Enclosing One caused the regained colonies to produce for themselves molecular threads, but these served a different purpose. Instead of binding the amoebic creatures together, these bound the walls of the cells to any flat, stony surface they remained on with an adhesive substance. As desired, the simple colonies began to spread their way back into the shallows, into the rougher coasts that lay yet unexploited by the more complex fractals.

The Enclosing One realised that it had isolated the collections of cells severely from their cousins in the deeper water. They were breaking away from the genetic family that grew in the darker places, and the Entity allowed it, casting away that which had served its purpose. [i]This process is still slow. Hm. There will be more adaptations needed for this habitat... In time, in time, in time.[/i] The shore colonies were only succeeding in their new home because they were lonely. The ebb of the tide killed those it left exposed to air, and the rest subsisted on the smaller cells brought by the waves, growing slowly. When they did grow, however, they made a thin covering of lightly walled cells attached to the rock. Progress!

As for the more complex colonies... There was still work to be done there. The same predators that were feeding on it, and the drifting bodies out of the Entity's control, were growing larger. For now, the flat, universally linked-up shape of the cells wasn't an easy form to consume by using a single orifice. [i]...Not yet. That orifice the grazers are using can grow, can adapt to the task. Will it? Perhaps. This untamed life is certainly... Opportunistic.[/i] Still, the grazing pests did offer a niche of their own. Until now the colony had simply surrounded and absorbed anything that drifted upon it, but many of the drifters were now complex and large by comparison, or broken corpses of something large. Some of them simply bounced away on the current or re-formed before they could be consumed. [i]I think I must emulate the soulless wild, here. Opportunity calls.[/i]

The surfaces that produced spores were only a continuation of the already-present, natural behaviour, but this was a different change. The same genetic code now produced two types of cells that linked up in the same pattern. The first was a carpet that engulfed and devoured the simple cells that drifted among it. As the spreading, dividing pattern of the carpet covered the shallow sand, another type of cell grew with it, growing with and folding into the seams left by an adjusted growth pattern. 

The second type rested almost dormant unless it was damaged and needed to form a protective covering, or if it belonged to a spore-fertile surface. The specialised cells formed wide folds and loops in the carpet, and upon contact with a eukaryotic cell that was not part of the completed maze of connections, they pulled themselves inwards and contracted to pull the object into the layers of consuming cells. 

Without the second type of tissue growing in unison with the consuming growth, the layer would produce flaws and gaps. The cells which filled the erroneous locations would respond to the opposite part of their code, producing the enclosing folds. It was a harmonious system. [i]Excellent.[/i]

[hider=Enclosing One]17% - Fractal Colonies
10% - Shore Colonies
3% - Unused
70% - Undeveloped

The new colonies can now survive the pound of the waves on the rougher coasts, but have assumed a lichen-like existance alternating between dormancy and occasional growth, leaving behind a barely-changed rogue species in the deeper waters yet again. The fractals have started to specialise, with a separate tissue that folds passing eukaryotes into the original consuming layer.[/hider]