half-edited flash

Palette cleanser between midnight snack and going back to the novella. Half-prompted by my own prompt to Correspondence Chapbook Collective for Creativity to Try Writing an omission.

"That's really what you want?"

The fish looks half dead in the water, rolled on its side to show a pale belly to the equally pale sky. It looks half dead, but I know it is alive because it waves a fin in the air, mirroring the fin underwater that keeps the fish beside my boat. That, and it speaks with me.

Laying on its side is the only way the fish can look at me with its dark, gaping eye as we converse about the weather, the lake, fishing, and, of course, my wish.

Reeling it in, though no easy feat in itself, hadn't been enough. No, besides locating the most singular fish west of the Rockies, besides luring it, besides pulling it out of the water (all twenty six inches, then I was allowed to let it back in the lake), I also had to charm it. Ladylike. Luckily, that part had been in my study materials, so I had come prepared. At least I didn't have to kiss it.

When magical creatures like this fish are discovered, treasure hunters make a cottage industry of pamphlets, ebooks, and guided tours. But few outside the business realize how much trial and error experimentation goes a verified discovery.

Some creatures need gifts, some need favors, some need validation. Some needed to be haggled with. Some need kisses, some need tickling, some need blood. Some need a stiff drink. Each creature of wonder has its own rules and rituals that must be observed, and unlike the combination locks securing the vaults that hold the world's gold, magical beings can't be defeated by a stethoscope, a good ear, and a deft touch. Very often. Less than one percent.

I had researched diligently to find something to grant my particular wish (magical entities aren't immune to poisons of bigotry and jealousy). Every listed creature within three hundred required more sacrifice, money, or vacation time than I had stashed away. Stumbling onto the possibility for a local, magic fish--and an easygoing fish at that--was a boon.

Truthfully, the discovery was more tripping over than stumbling onto. A story of the wish fish was printed in a newspaper wrapped around a jewelry box beneath a stack of Spanish language National Geographics in the junk room at the end of the hall on the third floor at an estate sale in the house that Jack built. I was there looking for cast iron.

And damn if the paper wasn't older than my mother, but the report was succinct. It said all the lucky wish recipient had done was catch a massive fish with black eyes and green fins, reel it in, hear its voice, toss it back, then have a nice chat with the magical, socially-starved individual.

Where I'm from, people don't really talk, so that last bit was harder than it sounds. I practiced chit-chat at a local coffee bar for a full month, but eventually the owner asked me to stop making the other customers uncomfortable. I wasn't comfortable either, but practice wasn't helping so I set off to talk. To. That. Fish.

It's passed now, though. The slimy, scaly conversation is heaped in my mind's junkyard of useless memories alongside how to get to my elementary school, the combination of my brother's bike lock, and the number of trees on the northern bank, which I counted while waiting for the fish to take my bait.

Now that fish is floating gently and staring at me, as though willing my body to tip from the boat and drown in its deep, black eye.

"You're sure?"

I nod.

"Well, alright then."

With a flick of its emerald tail, the fish wriggles back into the darkness far beneath my boat.

I don't notice any change, or feel any different. But I don't suppose I would.

Did you know that to be called a fish, an aquatic vertebrate has to have at least two pairs of paired fins? I need to revise some doodles, and stat!

This is quite a bit more edited than the 10k words of the WIP I have going. Less than 1000 words are more forgiving for proofreading in that way.

I want to go on about everything I'm discovering by writing so much this week, but I'm too busy writing.