What the Fox Knows

The apartment was silent except for the hum of the aquarium filter. Six goldfish—orange and white flashes in the blue-lit tank—swam in endless circles, their mouths opening and closing like they had something urgent to say but no language to say it. Mira watched them, her wine glass sweating onto the coaster Daniel had bought in Prague three years ago, before everything began to dissolve.

'You're doing it again,' Daniel said from the doorway. He didn't sound angry anymore. Just tired. That was worse.

'Doing what?'

'Swimming in it. Whatever happened. Whatever you think I did.'

She turned to face him. The fox she'd seen that morning—sleek red coat flashing through the garden, something dead in its mouth—had been easier to look at than this. At least the fox knew what it was. At least the fox knew what it wanted.

'I'm not swimming,' she said. 'I'm drowning.'

He laughed, short and sharp. 'Classic. Everything's a performance with you, isn't it? Even this.' He gestured at the space between them, thick with unsaid things. 'You need it to be tragic. You need to be the goldfish—beautiful, misunderstood, swimming in circles while the world watches.'

The goldfish continued their endless laps. She'd bought them because they were supposed to bring tranquility. Instead they brought the opposite: the constant reminder that some things are meant to be contained, observed, never touched.

'I never wanted an audience,' she said quietly. 'I wanted you to see me.'

'I did,' he said. 'I just stopped liking what I saw.'

The fox appeared again in the garden outside, framed in the window. It looked directly at her through the glass, amber eyes knowing something she didn't. Then it turned and vanished into the darkness, whatever it carried still clamped in its jaws.

Daniel moved to the aquarium. He reached in, his hand breaking the water's surface, and scooped out a goldfish in the net. It flopped on the carpet, gasping.

'What are you doing?'

'This one's sick,' he said, not looking at her. 'It's been swimming sideways for a week. It's suffering.'

'And you're just going to—what? Put it out of its misery?'

He didn't answer. He didn't have to. The goldfish stopped gasping. The room felt suddenly enormous, filled with everything they couldn't say anymore.

She finished her wine. She thought about the fox, about what it might have been carrying. About the things that needed to be carried away, and the things that needed to be left to swim, however sideways, until they found their way to the surface or didn't.