Electric Fish

The cat appeared on my balcony during the storm, a sleek black shadow against the purple flashes of lightning that tore through the Seattle sky. I'd been standing there for an hour, nursing a whiskey I didn't want, thinking about Marcus's funeral scheduled for tomorrow morning.

"You're missing the best part," I told the cat, gesturing with my glass. Another bolt of lightning illuminated the downtown skyline, briefly turning the Space Needle into a glowing monument before plunging us back into darkness. The cat didn't care about meteorological drama. It was focused on the glass bowl sitting on my patio table, where three goldfish—Marcus's goldfish, now mine—circled in their dim orange glow.

Marcus had bought them two weeks before the stroke. "Something living," he'd said, "something that doesn't ask anything of us." After fifteen years of marriage, after the miscarriage and the failed adoption attempts and the quiet resentments that had built like sediment in a river, we'd settled for fish.

The lightning flashed again, closer this time. The cat's eyes reflected green in the sudden brightness. I watched its muscles tense, predator instinct triggered by the helpless fluttering of orange fins through glass walls. I should have chased it away. Instead, I found myself hoping it would succeed.

"Go ahead," I whispered. The thunder answered, shaking the floor beneath my bare feet. "End the waiting."

The goldfish swam on, oblivious. The cat's tail twitched once, then settled. It turned to look at me, and in that moment of shared stillness between hunter and witness, I understood something about endurance. Some creatures survive because they fight. Others survive because they simply refuse to notice the storm.

I went inside and returned with a saucer of milk. The cat drank while lightning continued to stitch together the broken sky, and for the first time since Marcus died, I didn't feel alone.