The Tidepool (Published in Stork Magazine)

Down on the rocks, where the waves have yet to lay themselves;

I was merely looking, and with no particular interest, at a pool left from an old tide. It was then, to my delight, that a fish spoke out to me.

“How wretched is this world,” the fish lamented.

Here, I was certainly inclined to agree, though I could see no reason for the fish to think as such. It seemed his pool was ample enough, fairly abundant, and generally spacious in footage. He, a rather small fish, had much room to swim about and live a decidedly unwretched life.

“Why it is,” I said to the fish, “But how can it be quite so miserable for you?”

The fish moved in a turn, and I saw that he was a leopard-spotted thing with a pattern that I found to be most mesmerizing.

“I detest this terrible life,” the fish answered.

Now, of course, I was apt to laugh at this. The fish was not as a man; not afflicted by maladies of love, morales, or any earthly problems. As I looked at the fish, all his terrible life appeared, at once, confined to the edges of his own pool.

“Come now,” I implored the fish, “See your pool here. Is it not a lovely place to swim about?”

The fish moved again, in a turn.

“This pool? Lovely?” the fish scoffed at me, “I assure you that this is a perfectly sordid place to live.”

“But look here,” I wagged my fist at the fish, “Look at all this that you have. See your pool, vibrant with purple coral and algae. What profusion! How beautiful the scene, so alight with colours and pleasant things. Or think of this! See all the creatures in your pool. Occupy yourself with the urchins just beyond you, huddled in congregation. Or what of the slugs that slip along the rocks? They seem gentle enough. Surely, they can provide solace.”

The fish swam about slowly and reflexively returned to where he spoke from first.

“Alas, there may have even been a time when I agreed with you, sir. But this is a time that has long since gone from me. Perhaps when I was a fry and did not know anything, I was blissfully happy to be here. But I have grown, and this pool has not. The urchins all clammer about far too loud for my taste now. They click their beaks, if only to dispense their streams of gossip. If I should ever swim too close, I would be punctured, surely, by a stray foil. Ah, yes, and the slugs. So aptly named, I should say. They are as willing a conversationalist as the moon. They speak so simply that I am prone to believe them either greatly stupid or veritably mute. What business have I to go about risking my safety and sanity?”

I looked about then and noticed that the rocks near to me were growing slick with salt spray. A rare and striking sheen of water then encroached steadily to my position.

“Ah! Then why don’t you leave when the water comes close to your pool?” I offered, “Though the waves nearly stretch to this point, I am sure with a well-timed jump, you might propel yourself into their clutch. Or else, if all is wretched, why don’t you give up entirely?”

The fish shook his head again.

“No good, I'm afraid. No good at all. I’ve done this already, you see. I’ve pushed myself and sprung from within this pool. But look upon me, sir. Look at my size. In the open waters, I am a baitfish. I can hardly go ten meters without dodging the maw of a great barracuda or skirting the teeth of a grouper. And to give up! Is that what you think of me? I am not something drifting aimlessly as jellyfish or a plankton. I can assure you of that.”

There was a note of asperity to the fish’s tone, and so I hastened to make him see that I really meant no offence. 

“I am only offering solutions.”

“There are no solutions,” spat the fish. 

“And there is the same answer as before. Again and again, the same answer.”

The fish looked unlike himself now, beset with agitation. Somewhere within me, I took a strange pleasure at this. There was an odd and heated effect that had now installed itself within my chest.

“I cannot help it,” the fish said, “I meet so many creatures who won’t ever understand. They think of me as a nuisance when I am only speaking the truth. It would seem now that above solutions, I am simply in dire need of understanding.”

Still imbued with a strange heat, I felt that this was the fish’s newest mistake. Here, he had dissolved into passion and admitted himself. I could not show it, but this error excited me.

“So it is the case that you are looking for pity?” I offered, as though this were nothing but an innocent remark, “You won’t see any solution, and you only want for someone to agree that your dilemma is truly a wretched one.”

Here, I knew that I had shaken the fish’s resolve, for he was silent. There came only from him a series of bubbles made into grotesque rings as they came to the water’s surface.

“Now I have felt this way too, of course,” I went on, “It is what we all want to some regard: complete and total assurance that we are worth our weight in suffering.”

I gestured once to the pool and then to the distantly thunderous waves beyond. 

“But consider that there is every chance you are simply imagining yourself as separate. You, sir, seem to labour under the weight of your own certainty. If this were all your own doing, then perhaps you are not quite as clever as you believe.”

Although, at this moment, I was made to consider myself newly. Though there had been an excitement in triumphing over the fish, I could now actually allow myself some general sympathy for his troubles.

“If you must know the truth,” I said earnestly to the fish, “There is less a difference between us than you might at first believe. I am not happy either, and life, as it happens, is passing me by. I perhaps judged you unfairly, for I did not know a fish could suffer like a man. But you should know that we are not different. I grant you that this world is wretched, but there is no place free of affliction. Not that I have found, and I should hope I have travelled a great deal farther than you.”

The fish scowled now, eyeing me and flexing his gills. Only after several moments of this calculated brooding did the effect fall suddenly away, replaced by a steely calm. 

“I believe you are a properly ungrateful fellow,” the fish concluded coldly, “You are a man, after all. You are perched quite happily atop the food chain, and yet you, too, bemoan your own circumstances. This is a world built around man, and so you can eat, and travel, and explore at your leisure. I have no leisure to speak of, for my each day is not filled with such opportunity. Yours, the life of man, is teeming with such glories, and yet you dare to commiserate. You dare to extend a hand in friendly sympathy when you are at good odds to at least change your present affliction.”

I, admittedly quite offended, pondered the fish’s vitriol with some consideration before deciding that he was, after all, merely a fish. And what did a fish know of life? I had plenty the reason to be miserable and plenty the reason to be quite so lonesome. The fish was a fool and an ill-mannered fool at that. 

And so I moved along, albeit sourly, to observe another pool.