Friday Fish Fiction 5

Arphaxad is back with the continuation of her story.

I woke up early on the morning in which I was to embark on my journey and went out to the kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee, and read my horoscope. (Pisces, naturally.) It said: Today is a good day to finally begin that project you have always meant to start. Everything seemed to be going my way. Then my father came into the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat down across from me at the kitchen table.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Seashell?” he wondered for the hundredth time. (Seashell was his pet name for all his three hundred-odd daughters.)

“What else am I going to do with a degree in Comparative Ich-Theology?” I replied.

“I’ve always told you fry that you should study something practical. You could have been a scale surgeon or a reef designer, but oh no, you all wanted to study FUN things.” Then he turned more serious. “Be careful out there, Seashell. You’ve spent your whole life in a modern ichtheocracy. Just remember that in some of those ancient pischarcies across the sea, there is no such thing as ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and ‘a jury of your peers.’ Oh Seashell, I’m going to miss you so much!”

“Really?” When you’re one of six hundred siblings, you don’t necessarily feel as if your parents pay all that much attention to you. They always say a Papa Fish is proudest of his first brood and fondest of his last one, which left me firmly in Middle Hatchling territory.

“You’ve always been the one with a sense of adventure,” he said. “And that’s why I know I can’t stop you now. I can only warn you to be careful.”

“Oh, Daddy!” I had to give him a big hug. “I’ll miss you so much! But I’ll be back after I’ve seen Venice, I promise!”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he said, laying his pectoral fin on top of mine. “It could be that your destiny lies over there.”

In the afternoon my whole family threw a farewell party for me: my parents and six hundred siblings, countless aunts, uncles, and cousins, and a number of family friends. I sat unblinking (since fish can’t blink) as Grandpa made a long-winded, gin-fueled toast to the success of my ventures, and the wheels of my bicycle, and the currents of the ocean, and the fish I would come across who were kind to me (and a curse on the ones who were bad to me), and to the sun, and the moon, and the water, and the gin, etc. I’d say he drinks like a fish, but that would be redundant. Still, I was going to miss his gin-scented kisses on my gill: “Lassie, you’re so lovely that if I were a young fish again I’d have to marry you!” I would miss all of them terribly, but I had to go to Venice. My father was right; my destiny lay somewhere across the ocean.

Famous Hat