Ninety
Days
Later |
 |
Skimming silently and with utmost speed, a water strider flashed across the surface of the water, the curving feet at the ends of his long, spider-like legs creating gentle depressions on the top of the liquid, keeping him suspended on the surface as he gathered microscopic material which served him as food.
It was dawn, and as the young guppy became aware of daylight on this nintieth day of his life, the movement of the water strider startled him awake and he was immediately alert. His attention was captured by a mayfly larvae, which was completing its emergence from a mysterious metamorphosis between water-dwelling nymph and air-breathing adult.
The fully developed larvae had attached itself last night to a strand of algae at the water's surface close to the young fish's accustomed sleeping place among the water plants, where he had returned each night since his birth. The skin of the nymph had become crystallized by the air, and as the intense stare of the little guppy's eyes raptly focused on it, it split slowly and almost evenly, straight up the back. With slow, humping movements, the body of the adult mayfly began to protrude through the split and heave itself strenuously and silently into the air. After several minutes, and with frequent stops for rest and gathering of strength, the fully-formed mayfly emerged to stand on trembling legs in the bright sunlight above the water.
Almost immediately it began a slow, rhythmic pumping motion, powered by its breathing mechanisms, which forced blood into the fragile folds of its wings gathered in a wrinkly coverlet across the back of its body.
The wings would dry and harden after being inflated with blood, and the mayfly would be airborne to spend its one brief day of life as an adult, hovering above the waters and mating with others of its kind until evening. Then, as the shadows of dusk were falling, it would skip gayly across the water's surface, dropping numerous, tiny eggs each time it broke lightly through. Then it would fall to the water a final time and die. The eggs would hatch below into replicas of the original nymph which was now being scrutinized by the young fish.
This brief life would never reach fruition, however, for a tremendous, black shape swooped easily by close to the water's surface, and plucked the minutes-old and incompleted mayfly from its perch atop its own previous skin. Only the empty cartridge of the nymph remained waving lazily in the slight movement of the liquid, just in front of the budding male fish.
He started, recognizing the immense, black shadow as that of a mynah bird, one of the natural predators of Orchid Pond which found subsistence on the juicy bodies of young fish just such as he. He flashed quickly away, out through the openings in his camouflage, and deeper into the clear water toward a school of guppies he spied further in the distance. He was three months old now, and his coloring had begun to appear, the outline of a deeply shaded eye-shape coming to be prominent in his flowing, triangular tail. The pupil of the eye design had the beginnings of a bright red color, while the eye-shape itself, was of a deep, brilliant blue, and reminiscent of the shape of eyes painted on Egyptian queens.
The vital elasticity of health was vibrant in the veins of the adolescent beauty. He had spent the previous days of his youth wagging contentedly about, playing and battling in gentle mock fights with the many young mates of the guppy school. He loved to play, and one of his favorite pastimes when not foraging hopefully for food, was to swim at the surface of the pond, riding the gentle ripples there, bobbing back and forth in an ecstasy of pleasure.
He had learned much of life in the pond, and his quick reactions had saved him many times from the disaster of becoming dinner for another denizen of the depths. His sexual urges were coming into flower along with his coloring, and as he wagged playfully among his peers, he would halt unexpectedly in front of a female, arching his little body and spreading his fins to full, quivering width, displaying himself exquisitely for her inspection.
Then, darting around to her side, a little beneath the female's body, he would quickly prick her with his gonopodium, the fin on his underside, which had become elongated and rather stiff during his adolescence. This gonopodium was the organ of his sex, and with it, he was fertilizing the eggs carried within her body.
Being more or less territorial, the school of guppies occupied approximately the same general area of Orchid Pond each day, keeping within loosely-defined boundaries and seldom venturing far from the relative safety of the shallows and reeds. Their shiny, bright bodies flashed exciting underwater sparks of color as they swam into the rays of the sun, throwing glimmers of red, blue, green, and gold into the light above the pond. They were constantly busy, energetically flitting here and there in pursuit of a meal and darting quickly in and out amongst one another, forming an always-moving kaleidoscope of color in the shadows near the reeds.
Lustrous, grey-brown females languorously glided in a never-ending quest for food, while the sleek, many-hued males darted amongst and around them, pricking gently at them in a frenzy of excited sexual displays.
A multitude of baby fish paddled happily amidst the reed stems, some unexpectedly ending in the belly of one of the numerous, ever-hungry pond dwellers which lurked hidden there.
Even the frisky, eye-marked male had eaten several of his younger cousins in his ninety-day young life, but this being the instinctive conclusion to his feeding urges, he was innocent to the fact of his cannibalism. His life was busy, and he was enjoying it to the utmost, doing his best to endure and enjoy for as long as possible the fruits and spoils of life in the pond. High above, the enchanting colors of an orchid-rainbow swayed gently and freely in the shade beneath the blossoms of the flame trees.
(c) 1993 Carson Clippard