I wasn't holding this thing.

Yeah, I'd gone north of the town the next day. I'd cast my line right where the lake turned into the river.

I'd caught maybe ten different things (not all being fish) before a tug on my line would have pulled me into the water if I'd been even remotely off guard. I'd put my entire body into every pull I needed to get this thing out of the water. I'd played a more intense game of tug-of-war with a water creature than I'd ever played with any human.

But I hadn't pulled this thing up as a result. It wasn't a mustard-yellow, and it didn't have a bulb dangling from its head.

I refused to believe it.

I refused to believe I'd caught an… no, the Anglerfish.

But… it had to be. If it wasn't, this thing was as close as it got.

I'd brought a cooler along, not thinking I was going to need it. Now, of course, I was glad it was here. I filled it with the same water I'd pulled the fish from, and put said fish of legend into it, where it swam around confusedly and tried to survey its surroundings. Its completely plastic surroundings.

I couldn't leave for about a minute, though. For that minute, all I could think to do was watch the Anglerfish swim around. My doubts were fading away, and I couldn't exactly refuse to believe anymore that this had happened. With the realization, my brain turned off. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I couldn't compute that I, a simpleton, could have pulled off a feat like this. Whenever logic said "You're looking at the damn thing," my self-doubt would cancel that out, over and over in an infinite loop.

My brain actually only started working again when it registered the voice of an older man coming from town, and that it seemed pretty angry. Not wanting my brain to bluescreen again, I picked the cooler up and headed back in that direction.

Turned out, Sam was holding a skateboard, and Mayor Lewis was scolding him pretty intensely. Seems Sam was doing tricks on his neighbors' flower box.

One part of me wanted to step in and mediate the situation; Mayor Lewis was angry, after all, and I'd never known anger to be a good thing when it came to conflicts. Another part of me, a much tinier one, had held Sam up on this flawless moral ground, and felt that tumbling to the ground; nobody's perfect, though, that part had to realize. The last two parts of me just wanted to scurry home and make a place for my new friend; I intended to keep each and every one of these legendary fish in nice aquariums, lest someone else come along and sell them to someone else who'd just dry them out and pin them over their fireplace… oh, and conflict made my insides crunch.

Before I could pass the clinic, though, I heard Mayor Lewis call my name, and when I looked at him and Sam, they were both looking back at me.

I walked over to them. Welp, I'd never been a mediator before, but there was a first for everything.

"This young man here was riding his skateboard on private property," the mayor told me. "Don't you agree that what he was doing isn't right?"

I took a deep breath to calm my nerves a bit, set down the cooler, then turned to Sam and asked "Did you ask your neighbors if you could use their flower box?"

"Well… no," Sam replied, looking down at the ground and seeming to realize where he'd went wrong. His face was beet-red. Mine would have been, too.

"If you'd done that and they said yes, I don't think there'd be a problem," I told him. "But it was wrong to do that without their permission."

Neither man said anything for a second.

"She's right," Mayor Lewis then said. "I don't want to see you using private property as your skate park ever again, young man."

"Come to think of it…" I said. "Is there a skate park anywhere around here?"

"There are plenty in ZuZu City," Mayor Lewis said, pretty matter-of-factly.

"Still…" I said. "I'm not into skateboarding, but if I was, I wouldn't want to have to go all the way into the city just to practice. Isn't there anywhere we can build, like… a ramp? At least?"

A few seconds of silence.

"I'll think about it," Mayor Lewis said, turning to walk away. "Good day to you both."

Something told me he'd think about a skateboard ramp when pigs flew.

"…Maybe I could discuss that with Robin," I thought aloud, but quietly. "Put it somewhere on my farm, a spot I won't be using? That plot of land is huge."

I looked back up at Sam, who'd been listening to me intently.

"You…" he said. "You could do that?"

"I think it would be good," I smiled.

He looked back down at the ground, fiddled with his board a bit, and said "T-Thanks."

I checked my watch. It was only 3.

"Of course!" I smiled. "In fact, I think I can bring it up to Robin today. You can come with, if you want. You probably know more about ramps than either of us."

"…I'd like that!" he replied, seeming to have cheered up a bit.

"Sweet!" I smiled. "Let me get this thing home first, though." I lifted the cooler to indicate it as the "thing" in question.

"Ooh, what did you catch?" he asked.

"So…" I smiled. "Remember those 'legendary fish' we were talking about?"

I could tell Sam didn't believe me. So I opened the cooler and let him feast his eyes on my beautiful new Anglerfish.

"Yooooo, are you serious?" he reacted. "It's so freaky-lookin'!"

"You're not wrong," I laughed. "I'd like to get it home, though, before we talk to Robin."

"No problem!" he smiled.

I hadn't expected to be doing… well, helping in doing a good deed today, but hey, I wasn't going to complain.

Author's note: I didn't start this chapter expecting it to go in this direction. I like the direction, but I feel like I could have executed it better. I don't know how, but this chapter feels lacking. What do you think?