“Ribin! Silk! Plank!“
“Leo?”
“Ah, come on guys I know you hear me!”
Four red-fish glinted in and out of sight through the light patches scattered under the tall coral groves they were rushing through. Each locomoting in perfect unison toward the bloodred mass shoaling at the edge of the coral metropolis.
The mass waved together in such a delicious way. Their scales glittered perfectly together in the light. It might have been mesmerizing if the little fish chasing in their not so distant wake hadn’t seen it a million times. Right now, he was on a mission of his own and didn’t have time to admire such things. In fact, they were the current problem if you asked Little Sven.
He huffed and puffed, his gills filled and his fins flailed in an effort to catch up.
“Ribin! RIBIN I just saw you look RIGHT at me!”
“Aw, come on! Don’t you pretend you didn’t, now! I know you see me.”
The Resilient outlier dodged a pod of porpoises and cruised above a bed of especially angry clams. Each individually claiming he was invading their space. Sven beat his red fins against the current in pursuit of the four.
“Now I know you’re just faking!” He cried, slowing slightly as he watched them swim toward the collectives. “If I can hear these stupid clams I know you can hear me… see! See everyone around you is even looking.”
As a whole, the red mass looked away from the tiny fish all alone and creating enough noise to out sass the colony of hate-filled clams, fed up with the flight station being so close to their home.
The four swept quickly in with the crowd of others that looked just like them and together they locomoted away. The small fish twinkled and glistened in the sunshine reaching through the waters.
“aaaah…” Sven slumped.
His eyes shifted to the endless abyss, suddenly hovering beneath his sifting fins.
*gasp*
He’d wandered too far on his own...
He scurried back to the safe zone. The moment the tendrils of the windflowers tickled against his belly like little jelly fingers letting him know he’d reached the solid surface of the upper shelf. Comfort trickled in. At least he was safe…
It felt lighter and brighter here.
A tuna float whizzed all around him, swallowing him whole and releasing him like…
Well, you know…
The little red fish sighed and turned his back on the receding shoals he’d recently been booted from.
Sven drug fin, navigating slowly along the outer rim of the flashy metropolis of coral highrises. He skulked through the mid-level anemone gardens collecting his thoughts. He watched the last few days play in a flash of a tailfin, but it had felt like an eternity of kelp weaving while slugging through it…
He darted over a gap in the shelf. They should do something about these cracks, you never know what might use it as an opportunity to gulp down fish in passing…
He rolled his eyes, suddenly imagining unwitting willie waltzing over the hole without even looking and something from the abyss beneath swimming up to gulp him down…
Sven was to smart for that now…
Four days ago might have been a different story, but since then, he’d learned of a plot so thick, a swordfish couldn’t slice through it with its long pointed tip. and it had completely flippered his world upside down!
Now, He wasn’t quite sure what to do with the tidbit he’d gathered because sharing it had done nothing but ruin everything.
So… what?
It felt like the water around him grew colder as a new thought rose with the bubbles rising beyond the shelf edge.
What if they found out he was tattling on them? He spun in a full circle, suddenly more jumpy than ever. He was only one tiny… tiny… TINY fish compared to an Orca… they wouldn’t even have to chew, and who wants to die alone in the belly of a whale.
His head spun with any other option available.
What if he’d misheard it? yeah! maybe that… it had been a long day, and it was lunchtime and he hadn’t eaten yet. Maybe he’d had a hangry episode, those happen! even to a sweet little red fish like Sven…
aaaaack, no…
He tried again…
What if… what if he’d accidentally been stung or bit by some critter in the lower kelp fields?
No… that hadn’t happened.
Sven knew what he’d heard… They’d already set the plan in motion. They had plants… in every coralhood. He grazed his eyes over the glistening paradise. if it’s already a bed of eels… He releasing a shoal of bubbles in a huge sigh. what does it matter?
How could he explain this to them? He glanced sidelong at the colorful coral metropolis as he continued gliding alongside. Even the outer limits were abuzz with busy life dashing to and fro on their way to join their daily occupations.
Sven grimaced at the reactions he’d gotten. And from fish he’d known too.
It was like no one wanted to hear about anything but the next movement to and from the places employing their days…
Was there anyone who would listen? He swished his tail at a rock sending it to roll and bump over the sandy coral surface. With a final bound it lept from the ledge. Never to be seen again. The abyss swallowed it from the little fish’s eye-reach.
Sven hadn’t been able to convince a single fish that what he’d seen and heard was real. Some had laughed, others had brushed by, a few more roughly than others. The only other fish who agreed with his call to action had been the puffer on patrol, not three fin pulls from his coral abode.
The triumph the little red fish had felt over finding an accomplice had been short-lived since the same porcupine continued to bumble on about some racket between the orcas and the above the way monsters, whatever those were.
Sven rolled his eyes at the memory. I shouldn’t have asked. he thought, almost smiling.
The buffoon had gone full balloon about the time he’d gotten to talking about the monster’s googly eyes and seal skin kickers and gummy grabbers where fins should be…
A batter of Barracuda rushed overhead like an aqua freight train. The little fish resisted the whirlpools left in their wake as they spun and quaked the space as they blew through.
“eeeeeeEEEEEK!” The tiny screech grew louder until the little shrimp attached smacked Sven right in the face.
Bonk!
The shrimp was bitty even by their standards… He pushed away from between Sven’s eyes with a squeak of delight.
“Ah! Thank you!” He cried.
“Oh, you. You’re welcome.” With a fin bigger by three than his new little buddy Sven pulled the little shrimp to tread in front of him and at a safe distance.
“My name is Jumbo Prawn!” He roared sending the cutest little burp of air bubbles colliding upward.
“But… you can call me Pip.” He hiccupped.
The little shrimp, he was to call pip… was staring back at him as well as one so small can. Sven narrowed his eyes to take in his new friend.
“Well… hello there Pip…” He said. The micro smile scrawled over his new friend’s features was potently impish. Like, he’d been planning to pull some prank from the very beginning and it was about to take place.
“My name is…” He prompted spinning a little hand at me.
“pa haha.” The little red fish nearly burst at the thought of the nickname the little shrimp had given so confidently. a tsunami of bubbles tumbled Pip.
“Jumbo Prawn?” He did his best not to laugh again but Pip seemed to brush it off if he noticed it at all. In fact, he was laughing too.
Once they’d quieted he shook his head. “Well, it’s better than any of my old nicknames anyway…”
He stuck his whiskered little nose toward the surface while stiffly crossing his arms.
“What were those?” Sven leaned in. It was nice to talk to someone else.
“Small Fry… Shrimp dimple… I mean, anything you can think of, I’ve probably heard it.” He waved a careless bitty hand between them.
Sven admired the little Prawn… he had spunk.
A strange smile crossed over the little shrimps face. Sven leaned in again.
“Wanna know something funny… ish…” He asked with a shake that made the red fish guess it was anything but hilarious.
He relaxed a little. Suddenly feeling more at ease, like he was in good company. Sven nodded.
“Yeah, okay, I could use something funny.” He nodded more vigorously, his sharp scales glistening in the light.
“Well, it’s not… actually funny.” The shrimp squeaked. “But that’s besides the point.” His tiny smile seemed more, devilish now… but there was a glint of something underneath that struck little Sven even deeper. Sadness.
“You know, I can say that I’ve heard every name in the book because… well… I had about a million siblings. And we were just one family in a colony! You can imagine what our neighborhoods look like.”
Sven looked around. Confused. “Where…”
He paused, thinking it better to let the little critter tell his side uninterrupted.
“Well, One day, I woke up and everyone was just… gone.” Pip exploded his little pink hands into the water between them.
“Not that it mattered much.” He shrugged.
Sven frowned.
The little shrimps’ cavalier attitude toward the disappearance was… strange caviar indeed. But… again, Sven didn’t have the whole story. He nodded and kept quiet.
The bitty firecracker snapped a frown right back. He swam in a little closer.
“I know what you’re thinking,” He growled. It was cute. Squeaky and impossible to see as a threat. Sven smiled sympathetically.
“I did go looking for them, but I’m not going to waste my whole life away trying to find a bunch of disappearing scuttle fish who didn’t think to come and wake me up from my nap before they left.” He crossed his arms with a huff.
Sven blinked. He moved in closer and patted his tiny friend awkwardly on what he assumed was his back… but again… he didn’t know much about shrimp to begin with.
When Sven pulled his fin away Pip was gone.
“Pip???” His almost frantic swarm of bubbles rose to expose more empty space
“Man those things are worthless.” He piped innocently.
“They are not! They help me swim.” Sven informed him.
But you couldn’t feel me holding on?” This time the little shrimp reached his bitty arm out, and patted Sven’s’ fin as it waved and flittered above his tiny head.
“Hey, knock that off! My fins are nothing to be sorry about.”
“Yeah, well, my situation is the same. I don’t want your sympathy don’t be a leach.”
“What do you mean?” Sven pulled away as if an electric eel had slid over his backside.
The shift in perspective revealed the same micro-smile baring tiny pointed teeth… Suddenly, Sven found himself wondering what the little guy might eat.
“It happened, they left me, and now you’re the third fish to interpret it stupidly… don’t you get it… They LEFT me! I didn’t swim away, I didn’t get lost like an anemone brain… They left.”
Sven resisted the urge to reach out and pat him again. “How long have you been by yourself?”
“I might ask you the same thing.” He squeaked, crossing his arms over his pink chest like Placodermi’s armoring. “I see schools of your type flashing around blinding anyone swimming around your path… Where’s your herd.”
“It’s a shoal.” Sven murmured, looked back over the way he’d come.
“That’s what I said numb-fins.”
Sven sighed, realizing he wouldn’t win he moved back to the first question. “My separation has been more recent,” He looked sideways at the shrimp hovering off to the side. “Or, maybe I’m just not handling it as well.”
The shrimp shuffled alongside the little fish. Watching him more than the depths he was looking into…
“What happened?” Pip probed.
Sven opened his mouth. And then closed it again. His fins sank for a moment before propping into perpetual motion. His movements slowed.
They sat watching massive shadows of their fellow coraltropolous occupants heading in similar directions…
“It’s a long story.” Sven finally sighed.
“I like those.” Pip chirped before adding in more of a snarl, “As long as they’re not about how small I am.”
Pip’s normal sharp-toothed grin had Sven wondering what shrimp ate normally… were… were they like the pirana he’d heard of in legends?
“Just…” the little red fish paused, casting out for the best way to say what he was curious about. When no better way surfaced than the first he spit it out with a blurt of bubbles.
“What do shrimp eat? Out of curiosity…” Sven shrugged, trying to make the question seem like an off the tail no big fish kind of query but inside it burned deep.
The tiny creature drew closer. “Anything.” Pip Squeaked, baring his teeth slowly, again.
Sven was suddenly grateful the little guy was… well, a little guy.
“Well, in that case, I might have a little of that laying around my humble coral abode. Would you care to join me for something?” He finished with a chuckle. Feeling less alone had a way of making what he knew, less scary and more interesting, and true.
“Can I ride on your back?” Pip looked past the redfish toward the Coraltropolis behind him.
“Well, Yeah, sure! That would be alright!” Sven called happily. No one had asked to keep him company in days!
The little shrimp scuttled through the water between them.
“Did they kick you out for being slow?” He asked, pausing in front of Sven with a glint in his tiny beady eye.
Sven smiled at the challenge, wriggling his tail and bunching his center to let the shrimp know he was running out of time.
“Schools about to leave the station… wanna jump on?” Sven smiled savagely. “Or keep up?” He finished with a quick little flip.
Pip squeaked with excitement and leapt aboard.
They sped off together, disappearing in the Hullabaloo of the Coralopolis.
To Be Continued… (maybe)