Three old ones sat together in the morning, watching the sun go up and putting off useful things.
“It’s the weekend,” said one.
“About time,” said two. “We should go fishing.”
“I know the perfect spot,” said one.
“I know a more perfect spot,” said two.
“Prove you wrong.”
“Prove YOU wrong.”
“I don’t really know where to go fishing,” said three.
“Shut up and stay out of this,” said one with long-held kindness.
“Yeah, button it,” agreed two generously. “Loser owes the winner.”
“Sounds good to me, the winner,” said one. And with such good grace they parted in three ways.
***
One slithered between the trees and ghosted through the light morning mist, breath hissing from the gills of their thorax. They followed the smell of water.
“Aha!” one said, and wriggled through thicket and muck until they at last triumphantly reared up and beheld a deep bog; quiet, still and dead.
“Aha!” one said, and surged over hill and dale and across wide-scouring sands until they spiraled up into the air and gazed down upon a salt-encrusted sulphuric basin, thoroughly populated by gypsum deposits.
“Aha!” one said, and heaved their long segmented self across the stones and the lichen and the moss and the strange ancient trees until they were worn and tattered and they nearly slipped and fell right into their quarry: a narrow streamlet, trickling over mountain gravel and empty of anything but glaciermelt.
“Ahh, to hell with it,” one said, and spun their self up and around in a small and very rude dance culminating in the sharp-splitting snap of their snout at the sky, which cracked an orbit which diverged a descent which sent many hundreds of tonnes of metallic elements slamming directly into the local geography, venting many billions of years of momentum in a single instant with only the briefest, politest deference from the atmosphere.
“See,” one said, once the steam had cleared and the crater had begun to fill, “now THAT’S a fishing hole.”
***
Two strode long-legged and thick-armed, sky to sky, eyes peeled like bloodied grapes, like sparkling-cut gemstones, like dead black suns: primary, secondary, AND tertiary. All focused all flickering all finding.
“There!” two said, and lunged at the glittering prize on the horizon, closer and closer and closer until they loomed low and large over perfect wind-swept waves, palely white-capped and made of nothing but fine soft sand.
“There!” two said, and lurched forwards, push-pull, push-pull, crashing limbs like tree trunks and feet like ancient stumps, elbowing past massifs and mesas, descending with eager haste to find themselves at the shores of a shallow salty sea, too dense to drink, let alone let something live.
“There!” two said, and hurried, shimmying toe to toe to toe to toe to target, stumbling from step to step, vaulting valleys, hurdling hills, stubbing digits and blunting nails and almost toppling, sinking to all sixteens before their discovery: a soft and blue-streaked wall of water, frozen, caught in the long process of slinking down the flank of a mountainside.
“There’ll do,” two said, and raised their hands and their hooves and their claws and their talons and swept and paddled and poked in ways that weren’t appropriate, which so shocked the glacier that it slipped free from its home and fell pell-mell for thousands of miles and millions of tonnes, dragging itself home whimpering and pouting atop a wake of scraped stone and dredged bedrock basins.
“Finally,” two said, watching the meltwaters rise and lap at still-raw shorelines. “Somewhere to fish.”
***
Three waited until they were absolutely sure the other old ones weren’t coming back. Then they stretched themselves from tail to tail to flagellum and went for a long, long walk. Their ears were open, and they heard birds (a thousand kinds) and insects (a million kinds) and moving earth and rushing wind and dripping water and breath and life and death and rot and birth and everything, almost everything that moved and some things that didn’t.
And three heard frogs. So they walked to where the frogs were loudest, which was a soft and worn-down sort of oxbow lake (like all oxbow lakes), surrounded by trees like well-wishers at a hospital bedside.
Three brought some flowers, so not as to be rude. The petals splashed gently on the water, attracting some bugs, which attracted something else.
Splash.
“Oh,” said three, as they sat down atop a bare, barkless, age-softened old stump, “so THAT’S where you go fishing.”
***
“Clearly,” said one, “this is where you go fishing. Look at how deep and pristine its waters are! Clean and cold and held aloft by the edges of its impact, mathematically perfect!”
“It’s a simple bowl,” said two. “Behold – a thousand lakes, a thousand shapes! Don’t like one? Try another! Beauty enough to make a fine fit for the eye of any beholder!”
“It’s shallow and weed-ridden and looks like you doodled on half the continent with your arms and legs all the wrong way around,” opined one. “Weren’t you supposed to have good vision?”
“And you’re always bragging about your nose,” observed two, “yet you can’t see your fishing spot stinks. Bad.”
One roiled.
Two pointed.
Troubles came to pass.
***
The fire was just climbing to proper height when one and two returned to the camp, eager yellow looking forwards to a red-glowing future.
“Hello,” said three. “How was the perfect fishing spot?”
“Insufficient,” said one, coiling as close to the firepit as possible as ice-cold water steamed free from bruised scales. “Someone tripped over their own feet and fell in the water, scaring off all the fish.”
“Unsatisfying,” said two, all uncurled limbs disjointedly picking and plucking algae and waterweed from every crevice and every other crevice. “Someone kicked up a big stink and fell in the water, scaring off all the fish.”
“Whoosh,” said three. “So, no fishing today?”
“Yes,” agreed one.
“No,” agreed two.
“Ah well, that happens. Always better luck tomorrow, right?”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” said one. “The perfect fishing spot doesn’t exist.”
“Bad luck is the only kind that exists,” said two. “And it’s just bad luck that the perfect fishing spot isn’t real.”
“Well, maybe you two can come with me tomorrow,” said three, “I know a spot that’ll help you feel better.”
“You found a perfect fishing spot?” asked one, before two.
“You found a perfect fishing spot?” asked two, before one.
“No,” said three. “But I did find a nice place to listen to frogs.”
***
And it really was.