Alicia Reyes McNamara
Elaine Robertson
Sonia Wynn
Victoria Canton
Curated by Chris Ansell
—
A sunny kind of day
Floating had never come easily to Bethany. Not that she had ever sank, but floating had always been problematic. She struggled to stay in the water. Her head was always lifting out of the blue, followed by her gils, her fins and finally her rather elegant tail. But Bethany had always felt that it suited her, floating just above the water. It was a quirk of her personality, like the unique shade of red lipstick that she had recently taken to wearing.
And really, she was still floating, just not in the space she was supposed to be floating.
And it suited her.
She liked how her scales looked much more yellow outside of the water, it made her feel sunny. (The exact shade of red of the lipstick had been chosen specifically to offset her yellow scales – and she was rather pleased with her decision.) And she was particularly pleased with the colour of the water today also. It was the sort of blue that you’d expect to find in a tropical lagoon. It made her feel quite exotic.
One thing that did puzzle Bethany was why she still blew bubbles even when floating outside of the water. It was something that had never been able to stop doing. She, like many other fish she knew, had always assumed that the bubbles were a quirk of living in water but, as it turns out, fish blow bubbles wherever they are. It had always perplexed Bethany, and some of the other fish still found it to be an unusual quirk. But then, they had never floated outside of the water.
Today, her bubbles were particularly yellow, perhaps because she felt so sunny, and they floated up to the bow she had taken to wearing. It was a new addition, and she felt that it suited her, but she was yet to make up her mind. She wondered whether it needed to be brighter. Perhaps a slightly different shade of purple. She did not let the thought bother her, it was a sunny kind of day.