Name: Laine, which means wave/swell/crest in Estonian. I chose this name because it sounds neat, and this language because I just love certain parts of Europe; in this case, the Baltic Sea, which is adjacent to Estonia (or should I say Estonia is adjacent to it?)
Gender: Male
I'm just reposting this old story because I think it's funny. I don't want to have a advantage or anything just because I gave an extra. It's just for fun. 8)
_______________
Picking impatiently at the reef bits clinging to the rock wall before him, Laine sighed for the tenth time in under a minute. He wasn't really interested in eating anything at the moment, hadn't been for some days now. Because of
it. The
fish. It wouldn't leave him alone. It was a five-spotted wrasse, common enough in the area of ocean Laine had been traveling through for the past week. It was small, but still so much bigger than his tiny body, and strangely enough, it was
red, a rather uncommon color for the species. Wrasse live in coastal regions in the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Atlantic, stretching from the southern edges of Europe down into a bit of Africa. It wasn't odd that he had encountered this fish, no, not at all. But it was odd that it
wouldn't go the hell away. Wrasse eat shellfish: clams, snails, urchins and the like, so the lupin really wasn't in any danger of becoming the fish's next meal. Besides, the damn thing could have eaten him when it first starting following him days ago; although, it did take a nip at his ribbons every once in a while. He'd been wary of it at first, suspicious of its motives, but now annoyance and frustration were all that was left in him.
Laine stopped trying to pick at his own unwanted food, going limp for a moment and drifting with the slight current. He floated gradually southward, moving in soft jerks as the current flowed around the nearby rock in steady, regular spurts. The fish followed doggedly, pausing itself whenever the lupin was momentarily dropped by the current, then resuming its path as Laine was carried further. Its dedication was so unwavering as to be admirable, but it still maddened him to no end. "Will you just
leave already?!" he blurted out. "You've followed me for
days, and for what reason? You are
insufferable!" If the fish wanted food, it could have stayed in its home off the coast of Slovenia. If it wanted a mate, it still could have remained in its birthplace. There really was no other reason it could possibly have for following a
lupin, of all things, along hundreds of miles of coastal sea. Laine was practically at his destination, a small bay off Algeria, right near the Prime Meridian, and the damn fish
still followed him.
Wresting himself from the current's gentle grasp, the tiny mammal set off to complete the remainder of his journey; unwelcome travel partner or not, he still had a job to do. The wrasse, faithful as ever, swam gently just behind him; it seriously messed up his slipstream. He'd tried leaving the annoying thing behind, but it always caught up to him, somehow instinctively knowing just where he was going and catching up in that slow-and-steady pace that just infuriated him further. There really was nothing to do but endure it. Consigned to his bleak, bleak fate, Laine pumped his legs steadily to propel himself through the water, settling in for the final stretch of his journey with his bothersome travel-mate. Hopefully, the fish would be scared off by whatever humans he was going to meet.
Somehow, he really doubted the wrasse would simply give up; it obviously had an unhealthy obsession with him. The lupin turned to glance back at it, bells tinkling slightly with the movement; it stared blankly back at him, red-rimmed eye shining glassily. "How long does your species live? I hope you die soon."
.jpg/270px-Symphodus_roissali_17-04-06_(Stefano_Guerrieri).jpg)
