A story rehearsed too often
On the way to the boat, Len had been practising the story he would tell if they saw the big fish again. He had a beginning, a pause in the middle and a gesture that required both hands. Mara suggested saving the gesture for dry land. The morning was pink and quiet, and the boat made a small wooden sound each time they moved.
The interruption
The bass rose beside them without waiting for the story to become ready. Water opened into a silver curve. Mara saw the pale underside, the dark line of its back and a scatter of droplets that seemed briefly to remain in the air. Len made a noise with no obvious spelling. Then the surface closed, leaving rings wider than the boat.
The version they kept
They tried to reconstruct the moment over breakfast. Len’s fish became slightly longer each time he reached the middle of the sentence. Mara drew a circle in the notebook and labelled it the place where the words stopped. By the third cup of tea they agreed that neither version needed improving. Some things were large enough without a measurement. The story Len had rehearsed never received its proper beginning.
This river and its characters are imagined. The adventure is fiction, with no fishing or navigation instruction.