Nobody announced a parade. Everyone came.
The Quiet Side
“This side is quieter,” Nilo said.
“So I thought,” said a fish behind him.
Nilo turned. Three more silver faces appeared beyond the first, and another small group curved beneath them. Above, the whale’s great flipper passed across the light.
For a moment, every bright back became grey.
Then the flipper moved on, and the silver returned.
“Have you seen Sera?” Nilo asked.
The fish beside him looked along the procession.
“Which one?”
“My cousin.”
“That narrows it down for you.”
Nilo looked too. From here, there seemed to be an unreasonable number of possible cousins.
A Brief Conversation
They had set off together beyond the reef. Sera had been telling him about a shell she had found, large enough to hide in until somebody else had wanted to hide there too.
Nilo had meant to hear what happened next.
Then he had recognised a neighbour. There had been a question about the neighbour’s new home, followed by an explanation of why the old one had been perfectly satisfactory except for its entrance.
When Nilo turned back, Sera was gone.
He had hurried after the moving company, expecting to see her just ahead. Instead, the whale had come between him and the place he was looking.
Now its pale underside filled the water above him. Lines ran along it farther than he could follow, and the far flipper looked like a narrow strip of evening blue.
“Where are you going?” his new companion asked.
“Round the front.”
“I’m going round the back.”
“What’s back there?”
“My brother, if he hasn’t gone round the front.”
They considered each other.
“Good luck,” Nilo said.
One Familiar Turn
He followed the edge of the great shadow until the water brightened. Small fish crossed ahead of him in loose, shifting groups. One was trying to catch up with two others; farther down, several had stopped beside a rock.
The whole procession looked much tidier from a distance.
Near the whale’s shoulder, someone curved round to face a companion, making a little backward loop before continuing.
Nilo knew that turn.
Sera always looked back when she reached the interesting part of a story. Sometimes he had to slow down to keep from meeting her nose.
He moved closer.
She was describing something with a tilt of her body. Her listener made a wide circle, apparently testing whether the thing she described could possibly have fitted inside a shell.
Nilo waited beside them.
Sera glanced at him, finished her sentence, and turned.
“There you are.”
“I’ve been looking everywhere.”
“I’ve been here.”
“With everybody else.”
She looked at the small company passing above the sand.
“Not quite everybody. Your neighbour’s still behind us.”
The Rest of It
They settled beside each other, with room to see beyond the whale’s flipper. The water opened into long bands of blue, and the light moved slowly over Sera’s back.
“You went very quickly,” Nilo said.
“I was waiting for you to finish talking.”
“That was a brief conversation.”
“I know. I heard the beginning twice.”
He looked back. His neighbour was still explaining something to someone, with considerable attention to the shape of an entrance.
Nilo returned to Sera’s side.
“What happened with the shell?”
She began her little backward turn.
This time, he left room for it.
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