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It was every fishkeeper's worst fear to have a tank crack on them out of nowhere. Dr. Mensah was just glad she was there in her office when it happened, heard the bone-shivering snap and the haunting music of water flowing where it shouldn't be, and turned from her computer to see her newest rescue's tank cracked down the middle and spraying water onto her floor. Her carpeted office floor, not her lab floor, which had a sensible drain in the middle. Shit.
The betta was straining to swim away from the heavy current, but it was weak from months of living in a cold cup on the shelf of a dollar store. The cup was still on the tank stand. Dr. Mensah grabbed it and gently scooped the little fish up, resting the lid on top just in case the little one had any ideas about jumping. It sank to the bottom of the calm water, exhausted by its brief efforts.
The water was still crashing to the floor. She needed a bucket to catch what she could and she had plenty in the lab across the hall. She brought the betta's cup with her, floating it in the only other warm tank in the building, then grabbed the buckets and a large siphon for good measure and went to catch as much of the water as she could.
The little betta would be fine in its cup for the hour or so it would take for her to set up a new tank for it.
I was back in the fucking cup. I had been free for a glorious but brief time, warm, with so many hiding places from which to observe my territory, but now I was stuck again.
Fuck. Fuck this. Fuck the cup, and fuck me for thinking things might be better now. I'd rather dry out on land than endure hours of mind-numbing boredom in this stupid prison again.
I was low on energy after my fight against the moving water earlier, but my time patrolling my territory (when it was dark, when no vibrations rumbled through the water and nothing moved outside of the walls) had built up my stamina and strength. Gathering it, I flung myself up and over the—nope. Ow. I hit another wall above the water. What the hell?
My next attempt was a little half-hearted, but the wall moved. When I hovered at the edge of the cup, I could see a slice of different color. It was worth a shot. I floated backwards, then rushed up at that strangeness. The edges of the walls scraped against me, but I made it. I was out.
And to my surprise, I was in more water. It was warm and clean, and as I drifted deeper, the light dimmed. This water was—I don't fucking know. It was warm, it smelled good, it felt right. Something in this water dimmed the bright lights, casting everything in a soft glow. I liked it, especially how it got darker deeper in the water. There were tons of plants down here, providing great vantage points. I darted back to the surface for a quick breath, then moved into the comforting confines of the tall stalks.
This new place was great. It was massive—even staying under the cover of the plants, I could swim much farther than before, far enough that it was hard to remember all the details I wanted to. I chose a spot under a nice bit of driftwood to stick to and only went out as far as I could map properly in my head before returning to that comfortably confined place.
Sometimes, when I wandered too far in one direction, I found the edge of the plants. There was a wide, open space there, a view to the edge of this world and the space beyond it. The human wasn't there, and neither was the bright box she looked at all the time. I had liked watching her and the shapes that moved on the box.
Of course, about when I was hovering at the edge of the plants and thinking about this, she walked past, then crouched down and started staring into this new world, back and forth, like she was hunting for something. She had never hunted me before. I moved back, deep into the plants, before settling at the bottom of my driftwood. I couldn't see the outside from here, but that meant it couldn't see me either. It was safer that way. Everything in this world was massive, and anything bigger than you could eat you. (I don't know why the human didn't, but she'd had plenty of opportunity to.)
I stayed there, hidden and safe. Above me, the water swirled in strange new currents, and as the plants around me waved back and forth, I saw the human above the water, a net flashing through the water, trying to stir things up. Was she trying to catch me? Put me back in that cup?
Eventually, the currents stopped, and when I let myself drift up, the human wasn't there anymore.
I was feeling some kind of emotion about that when a shadow passed over me and something from above said, You were lucky.
Shit.
I twisted around, my fins already flaring out in response to another fish's presence. But when I saw it, I froze.
It was massive. I could fit in its mouth easily, the mouth that was slightly open and dark and fucking huge. Its body was long, its fins short and small (but still bigger than mine), and every nerve in my body screamed at me that this was a predator, this was a thing that could eat me in a split second and still be hungry, and I was absolutely, irrevocably fucked.
But for now, at least, it was still, a shining, armored thing, its blue eyes fixed on me.
And it was waiting for my reply.
Dr. Mensah sat down heavily in her office chair, the adrenaline rush exhausted, leaving her weary and worried. She'd caught the majority of the water and moved all the plants and hardscaping to a spare tank, but when she'd gone back to bring the betta to its new (if haphazardly-arranged) dwelling, the little fish was gone. The cup's lid was cracked just enough that a fish with a brain the size of a mustard seed could have—well, okay, that wasn't fair. It didn't know that waiting outside its little cup was a two-foot-long armored asshole of a fish that would see a betta as a small, unsatisfying snack. The tank was massive and heavily planted, and the betta had seemed quite fond of hiding, so there was a chance it hadn't been eaten immediately. But a bright white fish in a predator's tank… the odds were against it.
(She hadn't even wanted an arowana, but as an ichthyologist at a well-known research center, she'd been the one the game warden decided to call when she'd found a very illegal fancy fish in a too-small tank in some rich endangered animal collector's house. She'd agreed to take it in and wished the warden luck in finding a good living situation for the three—three!—tigers in the backyard.)
(She hadn't wanted the betta either, but it was a more normal "complain to a store about the bettas' living conditions, get in a heated discussion with the manager, and offer to leave if they gave her the betta with severe fin rot" situation. The little thing had been gray and lifeless at the bottom of its cup and she'd expected, with such a large proportion of its fins gone and the infection reaching its body, it wouldn't survive. She'd wanted to at least get it warm and give it a fighting chance. And it had been well worth it, seeing the fins growing in translucent and filling back in with white. It was starting to get patches of color, and she loved trying to track the changes in the short glimpses it allowed her.)
So she was quite surprised when, entering the tank room the next day, she saw a flash of white in the arowana's tank. The little betta had hidden immediately when she'd turned the lights on, but she had seen it. As she dangled a thawed quail above the arowana's tank, she tried to catch a glimpse of the betta in the flora crowding the bottom of the tank.
That would've been the smart place for a betta to be hiding.
Instead, when the arowana leapt from the tank to snatch its meal from the feeding tongs, she saw the betta hovering right behind where it had been. She nearly dropped the tongs in her shock. The betta didn't even head for another hiding spot, just darted a few inches away to avoid being smacked by the arowana when it landed. Crunching its meal audibly, it wafted in a lazy circle around the betta, whose fins were fluttering to keep it steady. And as she watched, the pair began moving around the tank together, the betta sticking to the arowana's side, the arowana not showing any predatory intent.
Absolutely fascinating.
Her main research was in species native to the area, but this would be well worth observing further. She'd need to set up a lot more infrastructure for the betta—resting spots near the surface of the massive tank, though thankfully it had rather moderately sized fins, more hiding spots that the larger fish couldn't fit, taller plants to give it more comfortable space to explore—and she'd always wanted an excuse to set up one of those water bridges between two tanks…
Image Description: half-completed art of ARTowana and MBetta. ARTowana is an iridescent blue with a golden head and fins. MBetta is white with red spots and a couple blue specks. ARTowana is looking curiously at MBetta, who is flaring defensively as it hides behind a twist of driftwood.