A Fishy Date

I’m covered from head to toe in nondescript clothing. I'm wearing a hat and hoodie to hide my hair and a pair of reflective sunglasses to keep anyone from seeing my eyes and to avoid facial recognition tech. Safe to say I’m a wanted man, and that should be enough to keep me in hiding. The problem is, I also recently entered into a relationship with a girl named Nerissa, and things are getting pretty serious. She asked me if we could get to an aquarium because she had never been before, and she’d heard that’s a pretty popular date spot on land. I have a hard time saying no to her, so despite the risk to myself, I’m here waiting for her inside the Light City aquarium. I told her we should come to her separately just to be safe.

“Ma’am?” I hear a voice say with uncertainty, “Please try to avoid placing your face onto the glass. You’ll scare the fish.

I step in, “I’m sorry. She’s with me. I’ll get her off.”

“You better.” the attendant says to me before heading off.

I walk up behind Nerissa. Her senses are keen, and she doesn’t even look away before she starts talking to me.

“So, you all gather fish from the lakes and rivers and oceans and drop them into tinier lakes and rivers and oceans, so you can look at them and take pictures of them?”

Nerissa, a member of the aquatic Delphinn people, asked while staring at fish in a medium-sized tank swimming around and around. Her skin is a combination of smooth porpoise skin starting on her face, reaching over to the back of her head and continuing down all the way to a stubby dolphin-like tail that barely reaches her knees. Her torso down to her hips is nothing but rough fish scales. Her legs, which are the porpoise-like texture, as well, look like you took a mermaid tail and ripped it in half and turned it into legs. It doesn’t seem like it would work very well for legs, but Nerissa is deceptively nimble on land.

Her eyes follow the fish like she’s getting ready to hunt them. Her vertical slit eyes strained to stay open as they dry out from overexposure to the open air. I continue to watch her watching the fish. The light shines off of her scales in an interesting way.

“That’s some of what goes on, yeah.” I say.

“Is there a feeding time?”

I eye her suspiciously. “Yeah, they have to feed the fish.”

The Delphinn looks back at me, the reverse re-breather we had concocted for her was working like a dream. It allowed the water to be filtered through her gills multiple times over. The Delphinn insisted she’s fine being out of the water for extended periods of time because her people have partial lungs. They’re for times when they're hunting land creatures and drag them down into the depths, but she gets along so much easier with the reverse rebreather. The rebreather huffs out some bubbles into the water.

“I meant for me to eat, Victor Rush.”

I shrug. “If you wanted to eat fish, then we should have gone to a seafood restaurant. The only things that get to eat fish here are other fish,” I see a sign across the way that says ‘Penguin encounter.’, “Oh, and penguins I guess.”

Nerissa snorts out more bubbles into her re-breather as she presses her fishy face against the glass. “Nasty creatures. Vermin of the waters.”

“They may be vermin of the waters, but they’re a well-liked animal on the surface, so maybe keep that opinion to yourself when we go see them.”

Nerissa’s face slides down the glass of the Aquarium tank.

“Must we? I would not take you to an underwater land zoo and ask you to look at the rats.”

I can’t help but laugh at that statement. Loudly.

“Nerissa, if there were rats in an underwater land zoo, and you didn’t bring me to see them, I think I’d be more upset about that than anything else that has ever happened over the course of us knowing each other.”

Nerissa pouts.

“Fine, we’ll go see the ocean vermin. Will that make you happy?”

“It would. But this trip was specifically put together because you wanted to see what an aquarium is like, so whatever you want to do, you’re free to do.”

Nerissa looks back at the fish tank.

“I would like to go swimming with the fish, as hunting them down and eating them is a part of the cycle of life.”

I look towards the invisible camera.

“So whatever you would like to do without causing a scene so intense it brings the Light City police department here, you’re free to do.”

Nerissa huffs, bubbles blowing from her rebreather once again.

“That’s so limiting.” Nerissa groans.

“Yes, but we’re already a disguised vigilante and an aquatic citizen of the ocean deep, so I think we already draw more than enough attention without needing to attract more.”

Nerissa smiles, “It would probably drive them crazy to know we were on a date right now, wouldn’t it, Victor?

Being a Delphinn, her teeth are naturally different from any human on land. Her teeth are long and sharp, and there are a couple rows of them. They stretch way up, as her mouth is also designed to open up very wide to help her hunt in the aquatic depths. There are a couple of snaggled teeth that sometimes poke out as little fangs when her mouth is closed. All in all an unbelievably cute smile.

“We would both probably get asked a lot of questions, yeah. Fortunately, despite what I said earlier, I think everyone right now just thinks you're wearing a really elaborate fish person costume to the aquarium because you’re weird.”

Nerissa hooks her arm around mine and pulls herself close. “A shame. They’ll never know the pleasures of being with a member of the Delphinn while thinking like that.”

I start escorting her forward.

“C’mon. I want to see penguins.”

Nerissa retches, but follows along hooked arm-in-arm with me the whole way.

And so we spent a fulfilling day at the Aquarium. We started with the penguin march and show. They lap the penguins around an assigned part of the aquarium, as well as have them go up and down some slides and other simple obstacles. Lots of kids in the crowd were very excited. I was positively enjoying myself, and I caught some glances of Nerissa thinking the penguins were a little cute.

Eventually, they asked for volunteers to help feed and pet the penguins for their good work. Nerissa tried her heart out to get picked for me, but the attendant unsurprisingly went with children under the age of twelve and not the representative of the ocean deep or her date. After the penguin show, we went to check out a few other exhibits, large ocean fish was first. Nerissa would tell me stories of how she first encountered some of them. My favorite was getting ganged up on by a bunch of dolphins when she accidentally beat up a member of their pod, thinking it was a shark. After that, we checked out small river fish. She just told me which ones tasted good.

We came on a good day because they were offering a program where you got to dive in the water with a trained member of the staff and get up close and personal with the displays. They did this in one of the safer displays with few if any dangerous aquatic life. In a stint of bravery or maybe trying to test her, the attendant invited Nerissa to go in with them. When they offered her a suit and tank, she refused them. She took off the reverse rebreather and claims to be ready to go. She dives in like she was returning home to the ocean, which took the attendant by surprise.

They swam around for a good fifteen minutes. Nerissa was constantly outpacing the attendant, who was way out of their league trying to keep up with a member of the Delphinn race while they were in the water. Still, the attendant tried, Nerissa was all smiles as she brilliantly glided through the water without any trouble. She began to draw a crowd of other onlookers outside of those who came to try to do the dive. Noticing she was building up a crowd, she started swimming in seeming harmony with the surrounding fish. The fish, although initially scared, warmed up to Nerissa’s presence quickly. I took a video of the whole impromptu show.

When the attendant was finally able to catch Nerissa’s attention, they told her it was time to climb out of the tank so someone else could have a turn. Nerissa reluctantly agreed, her hands behind her back. The attendant caught her red-handed with a snapper in her webbed hands. Able to quickly flee the scene, Nerissa swims her way up as fast as she can to the surface of the tank. She is able to build up enough momentum to get onto the catwalk above the tank when they dived in. The crowd around the tank was now sizable, and when she arrived out of the water, they all cheered and applauded.

When she came down from the tank, she was immediately swarmed by families wanting to talk to her and congratulate her. Kids wanted to take pictures with her and pose with her. A woman in a suit with blue hair that was just above her shoulders and had a single braid on the left side of her head came up to Nerissa to thank her for such an impressive display. I joined in on that conversation and once Nerissa proudly proclaimed we were on a date, the woman announced herself as the director of this aquarium. She offered us tickets to the dance of the whales show happening in a few minutes.

We took her up on her offer and made our way to the outdoor stadium. There was a decent sized crowd, all of whom were avoiding the front few rows for this show. The splash zone. Nerissa said she wanted to get a little wet, while I reminded her that she just swam in a tank. She didn’t feel like I said anything to counteract her desires. Right as the show was supposed to go on, there was an announcement over the intercom.

“Sorry, one of our whales is currently trying to give birth but is having a difficult time. Until this matter is resolved, the show is going to be postponed. If we have to cancel, then refunds will be offered.”

I curse our bad luck, but Nerissa stands up and runs over to the large outdoor tank. She jumps up and grabs the sides of the tank. Some employees try to stop her, but aren’t quick enough as she meanders her way over the wall and into the water. Nerissa finds the whale attempting to give birth, who is flanked by a few people in scuba gear. The divers see Nerissa and are immediately shocked, but Nerissa seems to assuage their concern. She examines the whale with the other divers. She snaps her webbed fingers and says something to one of the divers.

The divers look at each other before nodding the upper halves of their bodies. Working together, the three of them glide the pregnant whale through the water. Spinning it in circles in the water. The Whale makes a loud cry that can be heard from the stands and moments later and the baby whale is birthed out of the mama. The baby is immediately enamored by the mama, and the mama reciprocates the feelings of her newborn infant. Nerissa waves at the divers before hurriedly swimming back towards me. She hops out of the water and three point lands in front of me. Some water from her exit splashes onto me, and she looks up, smiling with a crooked grin. One of her teeth poked over her top lip like a fang. I get a little flustered and bury my face.

Much like before but to a greater caliber, we, and I mean mainly Nerissa, are thanked and congratulated. The director followed us in and hadn’t left yet before Nerissa jumped into the whale tank. She gave us lifetime passes to the aquarium, so long as she was working there, anyway. We watched an improved version of the whale show and just like that it was time for the Aquarium to close.

We exit the main doors of the Aquarium arm-in-arm. Our heads are leaned on one another’s. I can feel a soft smile gracing my lips. One of true contentment.

“See, being with a member of the Delphinn has its perks.” Nerissa said cockily.

I kiss her on her smooth, porpoise-like forehead.

“You got that right.”

Nerissa takes her thin, fishy lips and connects them to mine and then softly bites on my nose, and we walk off into the afternoon sunset.