Flash fiction

Grüne

Grüne

A green fish. Grüne, his fins blend with water. The green fish swims lively trough the dim curtains of his environment, a miry lake from anywhere, from some country marked on maps. But the lake, this one is beautiful. It has colored stones, in melancholic gray tones for the fish, lazy periwinkles, strange and not very appetizing plants, familiar plants and these, yes, delicious.

The green fish wants to go to the other side, he doesn't know how he is going to get there or why he needs to do this. – Perhaps in this part of the lake, the plants I like will stop growing. Grune thinks. Why would they stop growing? Yet without answers Grune sees another fish, this one hides in the stones and his scales make him almost invisible. It is an older fish and the green fish grew up around him. He would sometimes appear and they would talk. The older fish liked to think that he cared about Grune, but he was always so busy trying to look like the stones or the floor. The older fish would always disappear when he would hear anything less superficial. He was afraid of caring about Grune. And Grune had decided to forget it. The stones were dissolving and the green fish himself felt being part of a farce. For some fish, Grune was real and not a dim image in the bottom of the lake. I like to think that I know when a fish cares about me or not. From far away we are just many fish. The green fish thought and went on, unconsciously, swimming.

The water's and other fish movements always confused Grune. He had a dream: A clean and more beautiful lake than the one he lived. It would be immense, he would never be able to turn around it, even swimming his whole life.

To go away? There was a water current. May I come back if I don't like it? Grune was full of doubts. If I let the waters take me, I'll stay here. I need a lot of strength if I want to be part of the stream, the time to decide is now. Grune began to suffocate, the lake was smaller day by day, each time smaller and flatter. There were too many fish there or just too few fish that shared his dream? He could not grow there, there was no space. On the other side, the stream waved with new stones, new plants and perhaps it would take him to his dreamed place.

First, he swam slowly, uncertain, he was only going far away from the more known stones. Then faster and with more certainty that he wanted to arrive there, simply as if there was none else to go. The stream or the death realized Grune, there is no return. The water took him with violence and the fish lost his senses. The fish forced himself to go on, the water suddenly had a big fall and hurled him away in the air in a jump. Grune fell again in the turbulent water. But he was sure that he had arrived in a totally new place.

There were immense rocks in new gray tones, multifaceted plants and many fish which talked words that he hadn't heard before. The words, realized Grune enchanted, do not belong to the fish that pronounce them, they belong to the water, to the light filtering among the algae, to the movement. And there was so much movement! Fish waved their tails, tumbled, turned into balls and played with other fish. He always felt away from the others. He began to laugh, finding funny his strangeness and ignorance about everything. Now things begin to be really new, he thought. I needed to come to the other side to find me. And did I find myself? Yes, he answered to himself. I can have many doubts but I am the green fish, Grune, I achieved something. And so for nine months Grune lived in peace among the multicolored fish.

One night he fell again uneasy. Where are the other fish? They moved nervously in the lake borders. The lake was drying very quickly and soon it would fail to exist. I'll go to the border together with the others? What will happen? He sensed that he was being taken from the waters. He began to fall into a whirlwind. Will I die? Grune asked himself. He struggled for not being taken, but it was useless until he was at the end of his strength and prepared for the end. The green fish missed the water that always surrounded him. He just fell.

First the legs, then the body and head. His eyes burned, he had never seen such an aggressive light. The water abandoned him completely, it abandoned his lungs, and he cried desperately.

Grune was a human being and had just born.