S.H.H.A.

Talking To Fish

Delivered to: Misha M121 Fonseca [Misha] (she/her)

6:23 pm

Custom Set Destination: Meadow Beach, Suntown City

Mission Communicator: Ilene I7412 Faith [Ilene] (she/her)

Details: Good morning Misha.

—Message End—

Water swept beside the rickety old dock, about level with its mold ridden surface. Waves crashed on the rough limestone and basalt shore of Meadow Beach in no distinguishable pattern. Sometimes they fizzled out with a gurgle. Others slapped the shore with a force unwarranted for the breezeless late summer morning.

Shivers rippled up my paws and hind legs. Not because of the moisture seeping through the dock, up my belly and spine, and drooping my pelt. Looking at the mission details flashing on my ruby red watch, I vibrated from pure willpower keeping me rooted to that smelly slab of wood. If I could, I would've stormed back to my warm, cozy cat bed like last June's hurricane, which, had it gotten any closer to the shoreside city, would've swept Goldton clean off the map.

I tilted my nose up to the twilight grey sky and sniffed the salty sea spray. The number of particles of salt tainting the air probably added up just short of my irritation level. If I hated anything more than morninger people than me, it was water. And guess what all I could see between me and the morning horizon?

Water.

Why salt? Every other lake has fresh water. But oh, no. I just happen to have to live by the salty one.

Temptation to bail on whatever Ilene planned grew every passing second.

By the time her voice finally spoke through the watch around my paw, I had begun to slip away, turning my back on whatever she woke me up to do at that cat forsaken place.

"Analyzing the current temperature," she chirped. Her eager voice shot more ripples of irritation down my back and to my tail, causing it to flick uncontrollably. "Your watch says it's going to be sunny and bright in a few hours. Perfect beach vacation weather."

"The watch must be broken then," I replied, not in the mood for Ilene's teasing. "Mind telling me why I'm freezing my butt off staring at a stupid oversized puddle? And for the record, the sun isn't up yet, and I saw Yesterday's weather forecast. Rain all day."

"Curious indeed. Also, it's Meadow Lake. Let me pull up your mission," she said as she searched for the details she had plenty of time earlier to examine.

While I didn't know whether she was in human form or semi-human form because differentiating the languages had always been a challenge for me, I pictured her in cat form. Light emitted from the trio of computer monitors, illuminating her slim, Egyptian Mau-like figure.

Everything about her appearance was gentle from the curves of her almost triangular head to the way her traces of silky orange fur blended with soft white into two yellow spots. One positioned between her ears and down her neck and the other between her shoulder blades, spread over her long back.

That, or she was in human form, leaning back in my rolly chair because taking the time to find her own conflicted with her twenty-four-seven self-allotted annoy Misha work schedule.

"Let's see," she said when she retrieved the info she'd compiled for my mission. "This one was monitored by a team of supernatural human bloggers since last week. A few days ago, it came to the local newspapers' attention, and they had nothing better to fill the bottom corner of their paper with." I could almost hear the clicking of computer keys in the background, but between the waves and audio quality, it was most definitely my imagination.