A Tale of Fin and Fur

After a great flood, a whole fresh ocean of water began to sigh, heaving its shoulders downward in reluctance. The tree tops were sopped like wet towels, but the flood-line dropped day by day as the great tide funneled itself into vertiginous streams and that tumbled over the cliff edges in foaming white. Sighing, relenting, the great flat lid of the flood began to swirl itself into whirlpools over the expanse of a great bat cave, the entrance a mere recess between two sheer rocks. Air hung humid in the lightless air, so that even the bats found themselves sweating and jostling in place. When the rain had stopped, a steady dripping filled the void. Later, a piercing shriek of the bats. In darkness, they came fluttering from the great recesses of their cave to feed on the waterlogged carcasses which dotted the ridge and surrounding valleys.  

Beneath the cave, and all around it, warm gases churned in the baking crust of earth. Just south of their limestone hangar, water breached the surface as the outlets of a gentle geyser, which nourished the nearby forest and drew many creatures up the mountain. Quietly, the geothermic spring had produced its sly gurgle of steam and warm groundwater since antiquity and even before.

Between the drowned cliffs, the waters of the spring discharged into a basin of ancient marble. Now, sitting at the edge of this natural bowl, which was warm and pleasant on fur or scales alike, a calico cat laid on his side batting in the water at a blue-finned fish. They eyed each other warily from opposite sides of the pool. Each time the feline moved to a different side of the bowl, the fish quickly swam its diameter and sheltered coyly on the opposite side of the wall.

“Catch me if you can” taunted the funny fish.  “Won’t you find some screeching bird to catch and leave me alone here in my pool?”

The cat lowered its ears in annoyance. It had in fact, been hunting for an eagle’s nest when the flood had trapped him up here at the tree-line. He’d seen the hatchlings swept under a muddy wall of water that crunched whole tree beams under-wave.  Indeed, the hill which the cat had climbed had been obliterated in a mudslide, stranding him atop a bristlecone pine. And there he sat mewing for eight days and eight nights. 

Likewise, as the flood had raged, a school of fish swam blindly in a circle through the waters. But the peak was thick with pines and evergreens, and one of the fish became separated from its school. He raced back and forth through the submerged forest, searching for his companions. But the school had caught the scent of a nearby river that empties to the south, and they were gone with the current before any loss in their numbers could be accounted for.  Disoriented by the muddy waters, the lost fish finned its way among the fir trees, still holding out hope to find a fellow fish that could point him towards the lake. But no one came.

The clouds broke quickly after the flood. Soon the sun was shining fiercely over the mountains, and the waters beat a hasty retreat down the canyon walls. The fish had been swimming in a circle so tight, that he had hardly noticed when the range of his maneuvers became compressed in the limestone bowl of the spring. So there he swam for a long time before the cat descended from its tree to bat at him, mewing and hissing.

“You’ll never catch me, kitty, for the pool is too deep and wide, and you never learned to swim.”

“On the contrary”, the cat retorted, “when you tire from all your swimming, I will pluck you from the water as simply as a pinecone falls from a tree.”

The fish, who was not without pride, bubbled through his gills in amusement. “Tire of swimming— how could I, the fish, tire of a swim? Can a cloud tire of floating in the sky?”

The cat sneered and hissed. He paced back and forth on his little paws, tail flicking in agitation. “It may be true that you can swim for a long time, but I can hunt for longer. When I lay in waiting for my prey, I sit still as a boulder in the storm.”  They went back and forth in this manner all morning, the fish aggrandizing his fin kin, their famous slipperiness and uncommon powers of self-regulation, and the cat advancing a spectacular schema of feline superiority in gut ripping, fish stalking, and all varieties of pouncing.

But as the morning passed to afternoon, the cat fell prey to a weakness of its own: an irresistible urge to nap in the warmth of the sun. So long had it been since the cat had sunbathed he had scarcely recalled just how seductive the call of Apollo (or Morpheus?) had been. He closed his eyes just for a moment, let out a soft purr, and soon drifted into a slumber.

The fish, being quite sore of fin and gill, relaxed at the sight of the sleeping cat. Now he could conduct a complete grid search of the miniature lake, perhaps find a tiny opening near the bottom where the water might escape. As he inspected his little spring, the waters around him notched a slow but steady increase in its temperature as the cool floodwaters evaporated. The increase was minute, but the fish could sense even the tiniest of fluctuations. A petite outflow of white, sulfuric waters issued from a crack in the bowl.

He looked around at the smooth, convex marble floor of it, turquoise in the sun. It was not un-beautiful, the fish thought, appraising its new aquarium. But surely he would die when the floodwaters evaporated and the Spring reheated past a certain point. He’d be floating upside down in a sulfur bath by the time his school got to spawning. The fish examined every crack, every crevice of the bowl, which him took only a few minutes as the dim hand of erosion had smoothed it clean.  His fins trailed over the few blemishes in sight, nearly unreadable in their glistening chamber. Shallow pockmarks on one side, the handiwork of a light show ages past. Only the oldest trees remembered. Meteorites had kissed the mountain’s forehead, and they rained. Twenty six pines were burned to husks in a day.  A saber tooth tiger, however, died rather more quickly, when the ricochet of a stellar hail hastily re-organized the position of its brain and tusks (a new, unusual arrangement, by which the former dangles from the end of the latter).

The fish knew none of this; it was barely familiar with the forest, and anyway, there was no swimming creature that could live so long as to remember that, except perhaps the Greenland sharks. He’d heard legends of these old guardians. They lurked in the depths of the ocean for millennia, feeding on sailor’s bones. Had meteorites blazed in the shark’s empty eyes as it circled under the surface all those years ago? Inch by inch, the fish continued its search. He examined a trail of scuffed marble, where perhaps some ancient boulder had scraped over it in passing from one ridge to the next, carasouled within the half-shell of a vagabond glacier. But there was no exit protruding from its depths.

At the very bottom of the pool, a skeletal hand with a gold ring lay supine, the geyser bubbling between the fingers, unbothered by company. The fish knew that a human had died and someone, or something, had left a body part below, but that wouldn’t be helpful to him now, not even for a snack. Slowly it dawned upon the fish that there would be no secret passage from his bowl. He’d be heading above the surface if he ever wanted to see the lake again and spawn. He thought of his lover, Fishella, and was pained to think of her swimming in the seaweeds of another. He thought of his mother, with her extremely round eyes, and the tender way she hovered protectively in the kelp. In those days of his youth, great crimson crabs and nude divers turned the lake floor to a mud around them. The water, he thought. It was easily 70 degrees and soon enough his chordate body would shut down on its own. A jump was his only option. He would have to risk jumping by the cat, and even flipping and flopping down the cliffside, all in the hopes of a rendezvous with running water. 

The fish bubbled up close to the surface, where the cat’s purr vibrated on the water around him. He couldn’t fly out with no sense of direction. He’d have to start with a scouting jump. With a kicking flip of its dorsal fin, the fish launched itself above the surface. The world kaleidoscoped in a blur of tree, stone, bush, puddle, feline, and he plunged back into the water just as the cat’s eyes flew open, hissing at the newfound hydration of his forehead fur. “And just what do you think you’re doing Mr. Splishy-Splash?”

He swam an impatient lap around the pool, careful to stay outside claw-range. A breeze rippled over the mountain, the scent of rain water pregnant in the clouds. “I’m trying to find my way back to the lake. The water in the spring is too warm, too sulfurous. Surely, these are my burial waters, unless I can flip and flop down the cliff-side to my freedom.” 

The cat meowed in approval. “Ha! Then you’ll die in your bowl like a goldfish, and I’ll hoist your body up when you get to the big reef in the sky.” The fish considered this taunt carefully, weighing his meager options. He thought himself in circles while his would-be devourer lunged and feinted at the edges of the pool. 

Suddenly, an idea occurred to him. He steered his tail fin back towards the paws of the cat, and splashed upward towards the gathering clouds, as close to the cat as he dared. The furred one hissed and grappled with the air, his claws nearly grazing the shimmering scales of his prey. A whirl of fins submerged, circled, and burst once more above the surface, close enough to be a meal, but escaping yet again and diving back into the blue. 

Now the cat re-positioned itself lightly on its paws, ears raised in anticipation. The fish vaulted itself inches from the feline’s face, flopping against the cat’s raised chest and bounding in reverse back to the spring. “Mrrrrrrreow!!!!” the cat exclaimed, his inner claw snagging on the fan-like edge of his prey’s tail fin. The fish thrashed itself askance in a final twist, its mouth gaping, and the cat came tumbling down into the water with him in a terrific splash. 

The feline gasped in panic, its claw caught stubbornly on tailfin, scrambling for purchase on the bowl’s edge. “Help me!” the cat exclaimed. “If I die, you’ll die too! I’ll never pull the claws back in!” The born swimmer spasmed in the water, trapped anew on the extended hook of a rear paw. The fish spasmed in an utter panic. “No!” he cried. “I’ll help you breath if you just let go.” The rain had picked up now, storm clouds crackling in flashes that reflected from the mountain snow. His mind raced. A second flood might grant him freedom from the Spring, but with his caudal fin skewered, he would never make it to the lake. 

“Hold on.” the fish intoned quietly. He sucked deeply from the spuming spring just inches from his mouth. His whole body filled with sulfur and hot air, and exhaling, a tremendous bubble emerged from his mouth, rising in an oxygenated sphere towards the unbelieving cat.  Like the globular crown of an astronaut’s suit, the shiny air pocket settled around his whiskers, encasing his head. The fish hastily produced three more bubbles and sent them drifting straight to the paws of his former nemesis, buoying him. “If you want to swim on air, you’ll have to release the final claw. Between the bubbles on your paws and the air pocket on your head, you’ll be able to swim until the rain water overflows this blasted bowl.” Reluctantly, he retracted the claw. The fish darted backwards, siphoned air from the mini-geyser, and blew a final bubble around the paw that had menaced him only moments before. 

“There. Now you can swim, silly kitty. Just wait for the bowl to flood and you’ll be back on land soon enough. As for me, I’ll be surfing south, lake-bound, away from your stinking fur and tiresome mewing.” Indeed, the storm had intensified above them, electricity snaking down from the ceiling of the sky, casting the whole mountain range in stark relief. 

The cat blushed. He would be heartless to take the life of the little fish now, after calling out plainly for the rescue of his own. His ears folded back in apology. “I wanted to say….” 

“Yes?” the fish asked, his caudal fin waving.

“I wanted to say…. Thank y-”, but before he could finish, a blinding light struck deep into the pool, crackling and surging to discharge on the golden ring that clung stubbornly to deceased hand. The world swooned. The lightning rod had supercharged the pool, and the water boiled. Fishy DNA rippled on plasmic waves, pooling at the membrane of the cat’s five bubbled points. The cat itself had been fried from the inside out…. A second burst of voltage crackled on the genetic core of fish and fur, commingling in a rush of evolutionary outpouring. Cat was fish and fish was cat. All was one and one was all. A coma. A cosmos. Silence. Darkness came over the mountain as the day waned short. 

**************************************************

Feet from pool’s edge, the Whiskerfin awoke. He knew without looking what he was-- Cronus. Adam. The father of a new species. From his patchwork skin of calico scales, fins protruded. His claws were webbed, all the better to hunt and swim. Where there were once cat ears, now turquoise fins folded and flopped obligingly. Even his beloved feline tail had become something of an extended fin. He stood upright, testing his feet. He could walk, but the gills astride his ribs let him know that he would be just as maneuverable in the water. 

“Whiskerfin”. The words formed naturally on his saline lips. He would have to recruit others-- mackerels and lions, tunas and tigers. They would need bobcats and swordfish, ocelots and piranhas. They would worship the storm clouds. He would find Fishella and splice her with a lovely she-cat. In mountain spring pools, they would conduct their sacred rituals. He would spawn litters. His children would drink spring water like a kitten’s milk. Their new people would hide far away from the human towns, never allowing themselves to be seen. And they could thrive.

Purring, gills flared, he walked in the direction of the lake.