jackwolfe

In the land of neverending storms there once lived an old fisherman and his wife. This fisherman was from a family of fishermen, and had grown up braving the terrible storms, but his wife would always worry about him, because very often the men that went fishing out on the sea never came back.

On the day of the vernal equinox the seas were especially calm, calmer than they had ever been in recorded history. The old man took up his fishing gear and got into his little fishing dingy, just as he did day in and day out since he was a boy. Out onto the sea he went, and under a blistering Spring sun he cast out his nets. The day stretched on for what seemed like an eternity under the swealtering sun, and the seas were calmer than they had ever been. There was not even a single wave.

Eventually, the sun began to set, and in the purple haze of twilight, the man caught a glimpse of the biggest fish he had ever seen, short of a whales, sharks, or dolphins. It had surfaced right next to his boat and stared him straight in the eye before resubmurging into the murky green ocean. The man, thinking this may be his last chance to actually catch any fish that day, quickly began to pull up his nets to recast them on the side which he had seen the fish, but as soon as he started to pull in his nets (so that he could recast them on the other side of the boat, which was where he saw the fish,) clouds rolled in overhead and it began to rain.

By the time he had finished pulling up his nets, which were inexplicably empty (such a thing was unheard of, because the sea was renowned far and wide for its plentiful fish) the seas were positively enraged with such a fury that though the old man had grown up on the ever-stormy sea, he had never seen such a squall.The old man, trusting in his vast experience on the sea, resolved to sit through it, and no sooner had he cast his net back into the ocean than a rogue wave came crashing down overhead, knocking him overboard.

And as he sank down into the water, the great fish, approaching at blinding speed, opened is huge, gaping maw and sucked him right into its belly.

Right away, his wife knew that something was wrong, but she (also trusting in her husbands vast experience as a fisherman) had faith that he would come back to her, and so she waited patiently. But as the next day came, and the day after that, and so on, she began to worry about her husband. He had never been gone for so long. What was she to do?

She went down to the village to pick up her groceries, and asked everyone she could find if they had seen him or his little dingy at all, but nobody had. She sat up in her house late one stormy night, and wondered to herself, "Even if he wanted to ... would he come back?"

And so she used some of the money that they had managed to save over the years to purchase another dingy, some scuba gear, and a great harpoon, and she went looking for her husband. But the great fish was nowhere to be found, neither on the surface, nor under it. So great is her love for her husband, that, well, as far as anyone knows, she is still out there looking for him.

The End.