Yup, me again. Same old junk again: Mr. Skimmer, Stroke, and Niches are my fan-characters. I've stopped putting the names of characters that appear in future chapters in this. Gill and all other characters with names that are not mentioned above belong to Disney and Pixar.
This chapter introduces a fan-character, Niches the cichlid. Really, I know nothing about cichlid fish. (I can't even pronounce it!) I do know that the kind she is usually do live in caverns because of their slim bodies. Later, I found out that they don't live in the ocean, but I had already written this chapter. A lot of fish in this chapter are fish that live in rivers or lakes instead, but I already told you that this story is geographically and factually messed up.
Thank you to everyone that reviewed! Especially to whoever sent me that big long analysis. Yeah, I know, a lot of things about this story don't really make sense. I'm only a crazy little girl who doesn't know anything. I know things might not really be "fitting" but this is how my crazy little mind works.
FYI: All Moorish idols do have yellow tinge on their sides. When I wrote chapter 1, I didn't even know what kind of fish Gill was. After I looked at some pictures, I thought he was a bannerfish. Bannerfish look similar to Moorish idols, except they are a bit smaller, have shorter noses and different tail fins, and some of them do not have yellow coloring on their sides. In fact, one species of bannerfish are known as "false Moorish idols." Ooooh, those sneaky little imposters!
One part I wrote about forgetting how to swim might be a bit strange, but it kind of makes sense, since he had just learned how to swim with his ripped fin. This chapter would loose significance if I fixed it because it's all about him overcoming his obstacles, one of which his new condition. All right, that's it, I promise!
Chapter 3: Together or Apart
I awakened abruptly with a short cough and stared at the sideways, light blue, rocky wall. I searched my memories and remembered that vague sensation of being saved and brought somewhere else by a pair of gentle fins and a light voice. I glanced around, looking for my savior. After a few minutes, I noticed a moving figure near the end of the tunnel.
"Hello?" I called. "Is that you? Did you save me?"
The figure moved a little closer. I struggled and struggled to get up, flopping on both sides alternately.
"Don't strain yourself," the same light voice advised me.
"No," I called to her. "I can do it, I can get up…"
With a lot of effort I realized I could move my torn fin again. Eventually, after a few more minutes of struggling, I managed to use my injured fin in combination with my left fin to pull myself up. I wasn't able to swim again just yet, but at least I didn't have to stay lying on my side the whole time, feeling helpless. For a moment, I actually felt proud of myself.
Now resting upright on the ground, I blinked for a moment (I was having a little trouble with my right eye, since it also got a little scratched on the rock.) and gazed upon the fish that had saved my life. She was a long gray cichlid fish with a long black stripe running horizontally down her body. She smiled at me.
"You've got a lot of determination. That's a good trait."
"Th-Thank you for saving my life," I told her in my normal polite voice with a hint of shyness.
She shook her head. "No, I didn't save you, I just helped. You really saved yourself. If you hadn't kept on calling for help, I wouldn't have been able to follow your voice and find you on that rock."
That thought began to chill me to the bone, thinking about how I had almost given up and stopped yelling.
"My name is Niches. I live here in this section of rock. I know this is a long way off from my home, but I tend to migrate. I don't know a lot about this part, but I haven't seen many fish like you here."
I nodded. "That's because I'm not from around here. I ran away from home."
"Really?" Niches replied. "Why did you run away from home?"
At this point, my gills constricted, I wheezed, and I backed off a little bit, knowing what was coming.
"It's okay," the kind female cichlid reassured me. "I'm not going to yell at you or anything like that. There has to be a good reason you ran away from home if you're willing to get attacked by sharks rather than go back." Niches' face was so sincere and trustworthy, so I took a deep breath and told her all about my brothers and sisters' ridicule and my parents' death. Recalling all this past information was painful, but it was necessary. Niches was very glad I was willing to provide her with this information, a signal that I wasn't afraid of what she would do to me.
"So what's your name?" she asked. "I like your filamentous extension, it's very regal, like a crown."
This provoked a little laugh in my throat that I had not felt in many days. "Everyone like my filamentous extension."
"Well, of course they do," Niches answered with a little smile.
"Anyway, my name is Gill," I told her. "And I don't know what type of fish I am, if that's your next question."
Niches giggled softly. "Well Gill, right now you have no choice but to stay here, but once you're better, would you like to stay here with me, at least for a while?"
I already knew how much I liked being alone and having all the peace and quiet, but sometimes I did get lonely, and Niches didn't seem like the loud type of fish. I gave her a little smile in return. "That would be great, would you let me stay here?"
"Of course!" Niches happily replied. "Most of the time I'm pretty lonely here, so I'm very pleased to have some company."
Once again, the hope was returning to me, filtering back in. It twisted my mind to fit a new fantasy- maybe I had finally found my new home. Each day I was filled with relief and joy whenever she came back to the cavern. In the pessimistic section of my personality, I always thought she might take off and leave me, like everyone else. I was always overjoyed to see Niches swimming through that little opening. She usually brought back sponge parts for me to eat from outside, or pieces of the scenery for me to look at. " Soon, you'll be able to swim again, and you can go out and explore," she told me.
Many times I tried hard to get back up and swim out of the hole, but I never made it all the way. I tried to exercise my fin a little each day, hoping that would make it heal faster.
Finally, one day, I was able to lift myself up as always, but this day I knew exactly what to do. Shifting part of my weight to the well side, I was able to swim around in circles for a while. Halfway using the rudder technique, I began to pump my injured fin. Since it was only a ripped fibrous substance, the water filtered more easily around it. If I just used it a little more, it would even things out. I began to get the hang of the new type of swimming and soon was gliding about, as a streamlined fish should.
Niches poked her little silvery head back in our cavern. "Gill!" she called. "I'm back!"
Smiling, I zoomed up to her, deciding to give her a surprise. "Hi, Niches!"
The kind cichlid doubled back a little and gasped. After she got a hold of herself and began filtering oxygen correctly, she began laughing. "You can swim again!"
At that moment, I was feeling particularly jubilant, so I summoned all my energy, shot forward, and managed to turn a complete somersault. Smiling at her, I replied with, "Yup, I feel fine now."
Niches lit up with excitement. "You want to come outside with me? I'll show you all around this town. It's really a nice place." She swam up and slowly took my ripped right fin. "Are you sure you're okay to swim on your own?"
"Yeah, yeah, I am," I confirmed. I found that I was actually quite enjoying her fretting over me. This was the kind of motherly concern I had been deprived of in my childhood.
I gently paddled along beside her, taking in all the new sights. I had had a contradictive view that life beyond the coral reef was dull and boring, but it wasn't that way at all. There were plenty of different fish around. Snappers, bass, some catfish, and flounders were among the rocky-environment dwellers I met there. Most of them were very surprised to see me. The majority had seen Niches before, maybe even knew her, but had never seen a black-and-white fish like me before. Some of the residents even stopped to meet me as we went by.
Niches' closest friend was a different colored cichlid whose name escapes me. She smiled at us. "Hello, Niches, I haven't seen you in a while. Who's this little fella with ya?"
My shyness caused me to pull back a bit when she reached out to me.
"His name is Gill," Niches said, speaking for me, "He came from the reef."
"Wow," her friend replied. "All the way from the reef…?" At last, I let her rest her fin on top of my head. All she really wanted to do was feel my filamentous extension.
As we continued on our expedition, meeting more people along the way, I began to see a concerned expression appear on Niches' face.
"What's wrong?" I asked her after we got back to our little cavern. "I…I didn't do anything wrong, did I?"
"No, no," Niches shook her darkened head with the horizontal stripe. "It's not that you did anything wrong…" She took a deep breath of the cool cavern water. "While we were out today, I noticed you backing away when in the presence of a stranger. I saw you cowering when they got close to you. It's not really a bad thing, but I think you could do better than that." She swam closer and gave me a loving nudge. Instantly, my mind flashed back to my mother, giving me these same tender signs and the same sort of advice. "You're a wonderful fish," Niches continued, "I think you need to stand up and be the noble, majestic creature you are."
As I thought deeply again on the strange topic of my own actions, I realized that I hardly knew how to stand up for myself. I knew I was able to, but when the time came to actually do it, I just couldn't.
"I…I just can't," I sadly told Niches. "I…I can't stand up for myself when I need to."
Wheels turned around in Niches' forehead, and I could practically see them spinning. "Think of it this way- you have a lot of strength and determination in telling your body what it should do, you just need to extend that kind of attitude toward other fish."
That night, my own mind gears whirred, thinking about what Niches had said and how I would go about doing that. It might be possible, I thought. Then again, it might only cause more struggle and grief in my life, and that was something I did not need right now.
Days flew by after this critical point. I eventually got around to exploring the rocky territory, actually talking to some of the residents around my age. At last I had a few playmates and the bitter resentment of my siblings began to seem almost unreal. It was a distant memory to me, like it had happened to someone else. I grew a bit and was more than half the size of Niches. Most of my experiences there were later childhood experiences that I had been deprived of. There were no more lessons, except for one day.
I was playing with a young catfish and a crab I had befriended. The crab had the day all planned out. He argued with the catfish for a moment and the two of them slowly turned to look at me.
"Let's go out to the cliffs," the catfish said.
"I…" I didn't really want to go to the cliffs, but I also didn't want a confrontation with my two friends. I hadn't really defined exactly what a friend was at this point, since I'd had so few of them.
"C'mon!" the little crab called. "You'll have fun. C'mon, Gill!"
I took a deep breath. "Okay, I'll come with you." The submissive personality was back in full force, the only breaks being my departure and my attack on Stroke.
Unable to do anything else and paralyzed in mind, I followed the crab and the catfish out to a big crevice of steep underwater cliffs. The crab and the catfish happily hopped along the precarious ledges. I desperately tried to blend in since I was hoping this would be where I'd stay the rest of my life. I didn't want to make it seem like I didn't want to play with them.
With the back of my mind screaming, "No. You shouldn't do this," I managed to ignore it and hopped along some of the crevices. However, on one of these hops, I happened to look up at the water above. I always had a habit of looking up at the water- towards the sky, like a dreamer. Unfortunately, that was not the time to be dreaming.
I was taken by surprise when my body suddenly dropped. I was so surprised I suddenly forgot how to swim. When I asked myself how I had been swimming a mere minute ago, my mind just drew a big blank and I continued to fall, darkness springing up around me.
At that moment, I heard my friends' voices calling my name. Their reassurance boosted me out of my panic and I suddenly remembered how to swim again. I swam upward with everything I had and finally arose from the crevice.
That day I learned something that even Mr. Skimmer could not teach me- that I should stand up for what I want to do and not let others dictate my life. Afterwards, in this time frame, whenever I found myself submitting to another fish on what we should do, I would remember this incident at the cliffs. Maybe if I didn't stand up for my own interests, something like that could happen, and maybe worse.
I spent a year or so with Niches in that sheltered rock area. After spending that much time there, I was positive I had found a new home, and that this would be my new life. Just as I was beginning to get over my awareness of dangers in the world, the world once again slapped me awoke. The ocean struck again. This time the culprit was not a shark, as most would assume, but the notorious barracuda.
One fateful day, I came back to the little cavern where we lived, and called Niches' name. "Hey Niches! I'm home!" There was no response, so I figured she was out at the moment, visiting one of her friends in the rocky environment. I swam a little deeper into the cavern.
Suddenly I heard a familiar voice yelling out, "Niches! Gill! Niches?! Gill?!"
When I turned around towards the entrance, I saw my caretaker's other cichlid friend. She zoomed up to me. "Gill!" she cried. "Have you seen Niches?"
I shook my head, a little alarmed. "Why? Did something happen?"
Niches' friend quickly grabbed my good fin and dragged me out of the cozy cavern. "C'mon, quickly! We have to hide! Barracudas have been spotted in this area."
I was a little confused, not understanding exactly what a barracuda was. Mr. Skimmer had skipped that very crucial lesson. Many fish underestimate their ruthlessness.
Niches' friend stuck me behind a light blue rock much like the one I had nearly died on a year and a half ago. She put her fins over me, protecting me. My little mind raced, wondering and worrying. Where had Niches gone? Was she okay? A few minutes later, I held my breath as a long, glittering fish with pointy, sharp teeth swam around the clearing a few yards away. He just swam around aimlessly for a moment, then turned tail and jetted away. A painful moment passed in complete silence.
Slowly, the fish of this rocky environment began to emerge from their own hiding spots. Niches' friend fell to the sand and embraced her luck. She turned to her side to congratulate me, but I was long gone.
I only had three objectives: finding Niches, making sure she was okay, and telling her that I was okay. I frantically zoomed back around the small cavern, calling her name. "Niches! Niches!"
Silence met me with an echo that fostered the dread in my heart. I zoomed back out, searching high and low, around the crevices, in every other cavern in the neighborhood, and even in the sand beds. It was no use. Niches was gone.
I was never a normal child, thus I had an abnormal reaction to this tragedy. A normal child would probably go back to the friend, tell her that he couldn't find his caregiver, cry about being left alone, and go with his friend. I was above that. I did the only thing I could think of to do in this situation- swim. I swam as fast as I could away from this place as well, thinking that I would never come back. This was not my home. This time, I didn't even stop to pack a sack or say good-bye to my friends. Any fear I had had about the open space where I had been attacked was driven out as I fled. It was time to find a new home.
There's no saying for sure that Niches died in the barracuda attack. She could have escaped and is still living peacefully in some other part of the ocean. Somehow I know that if we were to meet again, she would not recognize me. That event marked a turning point and the beginning of the formation of what I am today.