The Coral Bloom

The water was still grey with early morning when Fizz and Inky arrived at the edge of the Coral Bloom grounds - that strange in-between hour when the sun hasn't come up yet, but the ocean is already awake and waiting for it.

"This is it?" Fizz asked, looking around at the dim, sleepy reef. "This is the most exciting thing in the whole ocean?"

"The light hasn't come yet," Inky said. He didn't sound worried. "Just wait."

They found a flat shelf of rock to settle on, and that's where they first saw the other two - a small round pufferfish doing slow, anxious loops near the reef's edge, and a sea turtle floating beside him.

"Are you here for the Bloom too?" the pufferfish called out, not waiting for an introduction. "We just got here. Our first time! Well, she's been here. It's my first time. Have you ever seen anything like this before? I haven't."

"Poko," Shelby said gently.

"Right. Sorry. Hi." Poko beamed at them like he'd known them for years. "I'm Poko. This is Shelby. We just met yesterday."

Fizz laughed - he couldn't help it. "I'm Fizz. We just got here too."

"And we also met yesterday," Inky added.

"Wow! That's so cool!" Poko's eyes went wide. "Shelby pulled me out of a fishing net!"

Inky tilted his head. "I found Fizz hiding from a shark behind some rocks. He was safe, but stuck. I got him out with some ink."

"You hid from a shark?" Poko asked Fizz, delighted.

"I didn't really have much choice," Fizz laughed.

There was a small quiet moment then - the kind that happens when four strangers realize they aren't quite strangers anymore. Each pair had a story about being saved by someone they hadn't expected. Each pair had ended up here, at the edge of the same reef, on the same morning, because of it.

"It's funny," Shelby said. "I came alone. I always come alone. And now look."

"Now look," Poko agreed happily, pressing a little closer to her side.

They didn't decide to become friends exactly. It just happened.

And that's when the light came.

It started at the very top of the reef, where a single branch of staghorn coral caught the first thin ray breaking the surface above. The branch lit up pale gold, like a candle being struck. Then the ray widened, and the light rolled downward across the reef waking each color as the sun climbed.

A wide stand of brain coral glowed deep purple. A cluster of sea fans, swaying gently in the current, bloomed every shade of pink and orange. Below them, a patch of soft coral pulsed a vibrant green, and shrimp the size of fingernails darted out from inside.

Nobody could pay attention to just one thing for long because the fish had arrived. A school of butterflyfish swept past in a ribbon of yellow and black, picking at the coral's surface. A trio of parrotfish scraped algae with beaks built like tiny tools, leaving little clouds of white sand drifting behind. Damselfish darted in and out of the staghorn branches.

"This is amazing!" said Fizz.

Poko just stared with his mouth open. It wasn't often that something left him speechless, but the beauty of the coral had done it.

Fizz could not stay still. He looped through a swirl of butterflyfish, trying to copy their formation and failing completely, then froze mid-spin at the sight of a tiny clear shrimp picking debris off the gills of a much larger grouper resting near the reef wall.

"It's cleaning him," Fizz said. "Look - it's cleaning him, and he's just letting it!"

"They help each other," Shelby said. "You'll see that everywhere out here, if you look."

Poko found a giant clam wedged into the coral, its mantle rippling electric blue and green, and spent several minutes trying to determine if it was watching him back. He discovered a tide pool of anemones swaying gently with the current and asked them, out loud, what they were thinking about. They did not answer. He asked again, just in case.

Inky drifted in slower than the rest, marking a few favorite spots with small thoughtful puffs of ink - a patch of fox coral here, a hermit crab wearing a shell two sizes too small there. Shelby moved beside him lazily, the two of them content to watch while their new friends raced ahead.

By midmorning, the four of them had explored a glowing anemone garden, raced through a tunnel of soft coral that echoed every sound twice (Poko tested this more than was strictly necessary), and discovered a sea turtle nesting ground that Shelby insisted they give plenty of space.

It was Shelby who noticed the grey first.

They had drifted a little ways from the heart of the Bloom, following a ridge of staghorn coral that curved out toward the reef's edge, when she slowed.

The light here was dimmer. Not from shadow - the sun was high now - but as if the coral itself had simply stopped holding onto it.

"Look," she said. They all stopped.

Ahead of them was a stretch of reef that didn't glow. Not colorless, just dull. The branches here looked brittle and tired. No fish darted between them. No shrimp peeked from the cracks.

"That's... not part of the show, is it?" Poko asked, though he already seemed to know the answer.

"No," Inky said, drifting closer, studying the dull coral with careful eyes. "This isn't the light fading. This is something else."

Fizz, who had never met a problem he didn't want to immediately solve, darted ahead toward the grey patch - then stopped himself before going too far, glancing back at the others. "It feels different here. The water's... heavier."

They asked around. A school of damselfish near the ridge only shook their heads and hurried off. An old hermit crab shrugged into his shell and pretended very hard to be asleep. A cleaner shrimp said she'd heard the patch had been growing slowly for a long while now, and that nobody really knew why, but if anyone could explain it, it would be the old grouper who lived in the deep coral caves on the far side of the Bloom.

"Old Gus," the shrimp said. "He's been here longer than any of us."

"Then that's where we go," Fizz said, already turning to lead the way, though he had absolutely no idea which direction that actually was. Inky gently nudged him toward the correct current instead.

Poko swam close beside Shelby, quiet for a moment, which wasn't like him. "Do you think he'll know what's wrong with it? The grey part?"

"I don't know," Shelby said. "But I think we should ask."

The four of them set off together, leaving the bright lights of the Bloom behind them, swimming toward the deep coral caves where the old grouper was said to live - toward whatever answer was waiting for them there.