Granted, some fish were the snaky, toothy kind that lurked in the shadows, ready to snap off the toes of any writer who dared breach these still waters — but some prompts were like that, an innocent lure with unintended consequences (not least of which was the blood and tears). But many were bright-scaled, flashing-finned prompts: Alternate Universes of fishtanks with familiar goldfish, fighting betas and alien, darting neon tetras; tightly-structured parallel stories in schools of round little bluegills swimming in round little circles; graceful angelfish with trailing adjectives and lovely dangling participles; unclassifiable things from the deep, with their blind eyes and dark foretellings; defiant flying fish, defying form and wresting gasps from their readers; and the occasional shameless bottom-feeder (you know who you are).

She always practices catch and release, of course — these three-sentence stories are too wriggly, too slippery, too breathless to keep for long — but the lingering droplets of spray on her cheeks (and the occasional splash, heard but never seen) remind her that there is life in these impenetrable waters.