Agatha likes to fish in the early morning hours.

I just want to sleep.

She tells me now she’s been seeing this every morning for the last week , and she’s dragged me out in the boat to watch.

I’m cross with her, but curious, too, so I focus my eyes on the still surface of the water, certain that what I will see will turn out to be a fish jumping or a water bug landing.

What the hell?

A bubble–quite an impressively sized one–rises out of the water and pops. The water ripples out from there, and as the waves move, they get bigger and faster. By the time they reach the boat, they are strong enough to give the skiff quite a rocking.

Holding on to the sides of the boat, I turn and meet Agatha’s wide blue eyes with my own. “You see?” she gasps. “I told you!”

“Why are we even out here?” I cry. “What was that?”

Agatha starts the little outboard motor and points the boat at the dock. “I don’t know,” she says, “but I haven’t caught a fish in a week!”

As we work to tie the boat to the dock, I keep looking over my shoulder toward the middle of the lake. I catch Agatha watching, too.

Suddenly, another bubble breaks the surface out there, and it has to be bigger than the first one, because we can see it clearly. We race down the dock to the shoreline, suddenly frightened, and from the shore, we watch the bubble burst and the waves ripple and grow.  In seconds, waves big enough to wet us from head to toe break land.

Wet and gasping, we stare. The sun rises. Water droplets refract rainbow prisms off a scaly black fin.

We run.

 

Author’s Note: This weekend’s Writer’s Unite! prompt.