Goldfish

He looked at the golden orange fish swimming in the bowl and carefully examined the wings, scales, large eyes, size. He closed his eyes and threw the fish under the crust of water and pressed a button to water it.

"Isn't that right now? Malala is only seven years old. Will you really be able to tell that it's not the same fish?"

"Of course you will," she told Adan, lowering her eyes to look at her husband. "I would have known when I was seven. He looks at this fish first thing in the morning, the moment his light shines. Gibba is his land. Only his animal. He loves that fish."

"Maybe we should tell him, Nala," Adan pleaded gently. "The time has come to talk about death and death."

"I can't," said Nala. "Not yet. Not in the background."

"We have to, sometime, dear. She's seven years old. She probably doesn't remember the danger. She was in critical condition for a long time. All those drugs."

"How can he not remember? The pain when the transport hit him - really Adan? Right now, he's a happy, well-organized kid. I don't want to give it all back. Gibba was bought for him before the accident. He had that fish for three years. It lasts, with all the bad changes."

"But the people in her life will go beyond, Nala. My grandparents are growing up. So are yours."

"What are they? Three hundred now? Maybe the next piece will come soon, extending another fifty years," said Nala, sniffing. "Death is rare now. It's just a stupid fish, Adan. I can repeat anything. Isn't that what we do all day, every day? I should be able to make my daughter a perfectly simple fish. The problem is my lack of enough pictures. I have only seven. "

"Didn't Malala have a lot of photos stored?"

"I can't be a pastor enough to leave her on the road. She would hold me if she saw that I read all the pictures of Gibba. I'm just lucky to be waiting until she dies at school. That gives me a good long-term window."

"What was wrong with this fish you heard?" asked Adan.

"The eyes were very small. Gibba's eyes were a little bigger."

He was fixing and repeating his picture on his screens.

"What do you think?"

"I think it looks like a fish."

"You are not useful at all. Maybe you think all goldfish are the same. But they are not the same at all. You are always very focused on the DNA of things, in all internal structures and variations. ? Cats that didn't even look like a built-in cat? "

"It was a hundred years ago, Nala. But all the little dots? All kinds of pigments? On fish? What growth do you do?"

"Just be me," he said.

He watched her continue, focusing on the details of the minuscule from selecting the images. Malala will never see the details.

"Some people would say," he said softly, "That we deny Malala is something important today. The opportunity to grow up. To feel death, to grieve, to move on. Some people say that death is the essence of life., Even a seven-year-old child.

"But this is easy!" Nala protested. "It's just a fish ... a little thing. And I can do this for him. In a few hours. Adan, just stop it."

"Death is inevitable. We are losing gold ...."

He turned his back. He left the lab, walking slowly, his hands starting to tremble.

It had been three years. He wasn't paying attention yet. He wondered if he had made the right decision. One day, she will have to tell Nala the truth. But he was not ready.