[Solo] Real Fat Fish... Really! (Real Big Fish)

[Scaramouche Fandango]

Real Big Fish knew she was dreaming. There was water rushing over her gills, and that only ever meant one thing- a shuppy dream. In reality, she didn’t usually feel her gills when she was in her shuppy shape- her brain kind of blocked them out, otherwise she’d focus on breathing, and that was never actually a good thing. If you focused on breathing, you couldn’t focus on other things. Like swimming. Or hunting. But there was water over her gills, and between her pa-

Wait.

No.

There wasn’t water moving between her paws. In fact, she… she didn’t have paws. No front paws, no back paws, no delightful threshing tail. She tried to probe the back of her teeth with her tongue, but she didn’t… seem to have one. Not exactly. Not a moveable one. Did she have teeth? She couldn’t really bite at her lips, so… Hm.

Well, she was dreaming. And she was underwater. And she could breathe, so this wasn’t a drowning dream. But what was she? She didn’t feel like she normally felt. Whatever she was wasn’t a creature that was sleek or powerful. She felt small.

What else? She tried to swim through the water, but found herself stymied by her own body. Her eyes were fixed to the sides; she could see stumpy fins in her peripheral vision. A fish, then? She wiggled her… caudal fins, she supposed, making note of the movement in her spine and complete lack of hips. Though she tried to push forward, all she could manage was a slow, bobbing motion. She swam up, trying to reach the surface- perhaps she could jump out of the water?

Oh. That she could do. Except it was less a mighty leap and more of a flop. She groaned internally as she breached the surface. She was buoyant, and that was about it. She was a fish, all right, but not a pike, or a walleye, or a gar, or anything strong or predatorial. She was a fatfish.

She was prey.

Real Big Fish respected prey as much as she respected predators. You needed both for a healthy ecosystem. However, she was unused to being… edible. She enjoyed her position at the top of the food chain, and as a shadow passed over her, she realized just how much actually ate fish. Kin, of course. Caimans, like the one she saw floating in the distance. Cranes, like the one flying overhead. Lynx- was that a pair of feline eyes along the embankment? Other fish. Shuppies. Watersnakes. The list continued. She tried to swim down, but her bulk kept buoying her back and forth. Her efforts created a great deal of splashing, and sure enough, another creature on her list showed up.

Otter.

Frantically, she tried to dive, to dodge and weave, to hide. She couldn’t scream; she could only bubble and splash. The otter, a sharp-toothed thing of lithe grace, swam circles around her. Its whiskered maw opened, closed, opened again- and then closed, and things went dark in her dream.

She awoke in a start, panting heavily. Hooves, horns, good. Kin-shape. But the fish shape had her thinking. She spent all her time in a predator’s head. Perhaps… perhaps it was time to try prey on for size. Just to see.