Оксана Петряшова-Овчинникова
Red mullet. Adventures of a whitebait

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All characters and events are fiction. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

To children – the most valuable of what we have

Red mullet. Adventures of a whitebait

Chapter 1. Don’t bubble about your beauty

There is a red mullet named Iskorka in The Our sea. Little, reddish, with neat antennas – pretty red mullet. She lives with her mama-red mullet, papa-red mullet and siblings-red mullets and each has his own separate mink.

Once she decided to swim on her business to The Sand shaft. Usually citizens calls it The sands. It is not far and she’s allowed to swim by herself.

The weather was sunny – really, like she prefers for her swimmings (people walk and sea creatures swim). Iskorka looked in the mirror, buried the entry to her mink a little and hit the road.

Some shells were sunbathing at The sands, which was surrounded by lengthy kelp on the left and hard (and sharp!) colorful corals on the right. Shells were competing with each other in size, brightness and grace. But the white one seems spectacularly beautiful to Iskorka. It was Fifochka. Smooth, with ribby shucks. Rays of sunshine were highlighting the water and she was bathing in bright stains.

Iskorka so fell for looking at her that saw a big (just a moment!) hand that was reaching for that shell almost too late. The hand belongs to a boy in a diving mask, one of that big creatures that usually finds himself under the water in search of treasures. And there she was, a treasure, lying in front of him, and a bunch of bubbles floated to the surface from her smooth shucks.

Iskorka realized that she could never be friends with the shell if this boy took her to himself and started working hard with her fins rising silt and sand from the bed. The boy startled with surprise and white shell fell out of his hand. He noticed bright back of a red mullet in the center of this heap and stared at this little sea fire. Fifochka landed little further away; silt layer zoomed from under her and seaweed hid her top. Iskorka waged her tail fin, darted into the thicket and buried behind green bushes.

The boy had no choice as to break surface with his hands bare.

Red mullet waited a bit, shook the sand off herself and helped the shell to dig out.

“Thank you so much, little red mullet!” White shell bubbled with gratitude.

That is how whitebait and the shell became friends.

And holes at The sands, in one minute deserted, seemed to whisper Don’t bubble about your beauty.

Chapter 2. To learn something new

In the morning it is usually warm and quite in The Our sea. Zooplankton, which is a delicacy for red mullet, hangs in water thickness and swims, turning over and mixing up, as if in a slow dance.

That weekend Iskorka woke up early and was loosening the bed at The sands with all her might looking for sea worms. So different and mouth-watering, they often show quite a speed escaping from red mullet.

That time, with antennas under the sand, Iskorka noticed translucent whitish jellyfish dancing in higher layer. Over a thick cap a pinkish flower were gleaming and under the cap were flashing short tentacles. That was whitebait of a jellyfish and red mullet decided she didn’t afraid of her (ones say jellyfishes are poisonous and sting painfully, that is why little Iskorka haven’t swum too close yet).

“What is it you are doing?” Iskorka bubbles warily. She’d seen jellyfish in the kindergarten but they hadn’t spoken once.

“I’m rehearsing a dance for the matinee.”

“Could you teach me?”

“Why?”

“It is nice to learn something new.”

“Oh, I сould”.

“You won’t sting, will you?”

“Don’t worry. Aurelia aurea stings only while hunting and I don’t want to eat you one bit.”

Red mullet swam to Ulya the jellyfish and she showed her the first step.

Chapter 3. Iskorka is scared

That time, as darkness fell, red mullet started to worry. She was swimming in her mink, moving things from one place to another and thinking how not to go to bed. One of those days, with calm water and absolute silence, whitebait was avoiding her seaweed bed more than ever.

Sea fox named Rombik swam past mink; Rombik was her father’s colleague and visited them a lot. He had heard rustles in her mink, knock-knocked and peaked inside.

“What is it, whitebait?” He asked sympathetically.

“Oh, you know…”

“Bubble the truth. I promise not to laugh.”

Iskorka looked in his little eyes with such attentive look and sighed heartsick.

“I don’t want to go to bed.”

“And why is that? The day has passed. You are tired, surely. Your fins need rest.”

“That’s true, but… I’m scared of dark,” confided red mullet.

“Oh, I see. It’s normal to be scared of something, but you have to find a way of coping. Follow me.”

Sea fox waved his fins, slipped out of the mink and settled down nearby.

“What do you see?” Asked Rombik.

Iskorka looked around. Was getting dark; seaweed began to cast strange longish shadows and she didn’t like it.

Rombik bend his fin wave-like.

“Now, look upstairs.”

Iskorka did it heavily – and froze… She didn’t expect to see there such amazing things. And how it was possible for her, living under the surface, not to guess of it earlier? Above them, in the layer on the very surface, was drifting plankton. Tiny plants and animals were mixing up and all this mass was swaying on light evening waves phosphorescing. White, light blue, pink… Real sea sky!

Red mullet settled down beside the sea fox on the sand and they were watching, and watching, and watching… Since then she hadn’t thought the dark so tight and scary.

Before falling asleep in her bed, Iskorka made a little window in her seaweed-cell (with a curtain of course) so that she could look at the stars while on her pillow every evening.

Chapter 4. Don’t take what’s not yours

That day at the other end of The sands (further away from where Iskorka used to swim) were giggling sea flowers. Their tentacles were swaying from underset and the fry were darting between them. Sea flowers were carefree, happy and bright because that day was special: it was time for Ms Seabed to be chosen, and all that year everyone would call The-very-best the creature who would get the title.

Little starfish named Luchik was in a hurry for the competition. Nevertheless she was spiky, grey-green whitebait and could not display the same elegance as those sea flowers, she had been dreaming them to call her even once The-very-best. She was shifting her fingers in a hurry, burying herself under The sands’ surface and running to get better place in front of these beauties. Finally she stretched out on the small hillock, that was emphasizing her, and didn’t move anymore.

Iskorka was speeding there too but not as a participant: she swam to cheer up a friend – starfish that had little faith in herself but owned the kindest heart ever.

On her way there starfish dug too deep and catch with two fingers something unusual in the sand layer; she pulled and found herself to be wearing Murano glass beads. Beads were shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow and Luchik immediately wanted to share the joy of their sight with others. Besides Luchik thought it was strongly necessary to decorate herself with something quaint because they were just so at the competition and she was plain, grey-green and running ungracefully.

The competition was in full swing when something large hovered over them. It was human girl, and a little one, but to the citizens of The sands she seemed just huge. Girl was looking at starfish through the glass of her mask with her eyes of light blue color as water and pursing lips sadly. All of a sudden Luchik realized that on her way there she found a thing someone else had lost and that it was the thing, something important for the creature which had it before. She turned her rigid body and, by putting her fingers up, passed those beads to the girl. The girl picked them up with her fingers carefully (sea creatures have tentacles and fins, but humans, as everyone knows, have fingers), those fingers looked like some tubes, and her lips lined in a broadest thread of a smile. Then the girl swam away.

Luchik fell on the sand and were considering leaving that place because of the lack of something in her, so she thought at the time, that would stand her out, but all of sea flowers started waving with their tentacles in a vivid manner, welcoming her and only. It was her act that they liked, they were touched by it. And that year The-very-best title was hers, Luchik starfish, for her honesty, because honesty-dress is not worse than the beads (besides Luchik was very pretty starfish and it was time to notice it). Iskorka complimented Ms Seabed bouquet from most tasty mild corals.

Chapter 5. Solid «no»

Iskorka is a well-mannered red mullet. Hello, good bye, please, thank you she bubbles all the time. But there is one word she is not comfortable to bubble, it’s even hard for her, and she considers this word not quite polite, and it is a short no.

That day on The sands was cloudy, even the current was cool.

Red mullet shivered a little and put on a sunny-yellow scarf with dark blue pompons before swim.

“Well, now it will do,” she bubbled.

Above The sands was lazily swirling a shoal of unfamiliar to her red mullets. One swam from it and bubbled loudly, indecently.