no more fish
100 word story inspired by Day 14 of AWC's June Story Seeds: Write a narrative about a character who finds a lost book.
No fish in ages. Occasionally their corpses, disintegrating even as she pulled them up.
The bay would eventually recover, in a few lifetimes.
So she dredged for treasure instead. Artifacts from long-submerged civilizations, hoping for something intriguing enough to convince those with spare rations to toss her a few.
She spent her days still now, barely daring to think, begrudging the energy it took.
At sundown, the net was easy to haul, which meant disappointment.
A soggy, rotten mess caught at the bottom. And inside that mess - wax? The long discontinued, but still persistent, plastic?
A bundle of pages. Words.