They're not sure where it came from.
Certainly, they know what it is; Babel education of the young is quite good. They recognize its sleek silvery body, cutting through the water of the pond the channel-workers had herded it into.
Slugs are easier to catch a hold of before they wash down into The Pit. They understand that they are being helped and double their own efforts to make the process easier. Fish, however, are not that easy to protect.
It is not happy with its new location, thrashing about in its own confusion, amid the confusion of the children at its status as living. Slugs are resilient, able to squish and squik in order to survive the long drop into the collection pools beneath the twin cascades that thunder their inconsistent rhythm to the magnet's humming tunes. Fish and other such living creatures washing down into their caverns would not be able to survive the shock of the fall, even if they didn't smack against the bottom of the basins.
It thrashes again, spraying water at a couple girls in one corner of the pond. They squeal with a mixture of delight and faux-fear, running away from it giggling before returning to see what it will do next. Fish are rare to wash down into Babel and are usually gone within a few hours. The children will try to spend as much time with the strange water-dweller, inventing stories as to where it came from, fabricating intricate tales of its journey.
The fish eventually calms down to accept its new name, bestowed it by its audience; Arsalan, the fish from the far west.
'He must have come all the way from the Western Wall. Or the Western 99 Caverns!'
His journey has been long and arduous, fraught with many dangers along the way to get here.
'He lost his people to a great current, and now he seeks them out! Too bad he is stuck in our pond.'
They spend the day making him an honorary member of their society, like an esteemed pet, until the game warden comes to retrieve the wayward fish and take him to a different place up above, beyond the Gravity Wastes. Even though they're sad to see him go, the children still continue to make stories.
Arsalan, the Great Western Fish, is not forgotten so easily.
YOU ARE READING
100 Blinks
FanficA collection of drabbles written off a pre-existing list of 100 prompts, centered around a multitude of noncanon continuities. Some long, some short, but all addressed in one way or another.
