I had a fish friend.
He arrived a bit shattered from the pet shop as these little things all do. For a pearl, faintly tiger striped dwarf gourami, he was healthy, just scared. He slowly grew back his nipped of feelers in my tank which he uses to sense current, taste, temperature and communicate with electric currents. As his feelers became more able, he slowly became less skittish and more curious over time. He and his friend, the sunset dwarf gourami often waltzed and talked overtaking each other in the generous sized tank.
Always smaller than his friend, he was also more courageous. He took to coming to talk with me when I sat down on the sofa by the fish tank to watch them. We ended up swimming together, as he followed the last two digits of my index finger pressed up to the glass, gently touching with his feelers then after a while calling me into new directions carefully watching if I follow him. This fish enjoyed my company as I did his. We both rejoiced and seeked the experience of reaching through the transparent glass into another creature’s incomprehensible world with the simple but overwhelming power of empathy.
He must have eaten too much a couple of days ago, and peas didn’t help him. His tummy became more and more swollen, his scales more uneven and he himself became more and more tired and incapacitated. Last night, as he was nearly helplessly lying on the ground, I scared his friend away from him as I squatted down to watch him with sorrow. I pressed my index finger a few times where his friend was a minute ago and he reached out to caress it with his feeler each time.
This morning he was dead with a dreadful portrusion on his tummy.
I wish I understood electric currents. What must have been the last message of my friend from another universe, where there is no gravity and no air.
I know what I wanted to tell him.