This weeks prompt for #writephoto takes us underwater

‘Finn, they’re here.’

Finn Perch put down the dish cloth and flicked his tail. ‘Why are you whispering? They will see your bubbles.’

Gill Perch hissed and the elderly fish rolled his eyes. ‘I just want to see what they’re like. We don’t want more whitebait, do we?’

Finn shuddered. No, they definitely did not, all that flitting in and out, dressing up in faux breadcrumbs like that sort of gallows humour went do well in the Pots. It had been a nice quiet backwater until Coral and her tribe moved in. He swam to his wife’s side and peered through the neck of their Pot. ‘So what have we… oh!’

His wife slapped him with her tail, making him spin back into the shadows. ‘You are so transparent.’

Finn stared at his scales, anxiously, causing Gil to tssk. ‘Figure of speech. You’ve the brains of a skate sometimes. Just because whoever that is has anodised scales, doesn’t give you licence to lose your buoyancy.’

‘Sorry. I’m a bit of a sucker for a rainbow.’

‘As if I’ll ever forget what a fool you made of yourself with that old trout.’

‘She wasn’t old…’

‘Whatever. This one has a husband and he looks to me like his got some apex predator in his gene pool.’

‘Shark!’

‘Better than that giant squid. All that “accidental” groping and sorry about the ink stains.’

Finn nodded. He’d liked Otto Pusse. ‘He was getting on. You’ve got to expect the odd dribble.’

Gil shuddered. ‘Maybe.’ She turned her attention back to the door. ‘Get back! She’s coming over.’

Finn pushed passed her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gil. We need to be neighbourly.’

‘Oh sure,’ his wife moaned. ‘You just want to ogle her patina.’

‘Now stop your carping and smile. Hello. Just moved in? I’m Finn and this is my wife… now where’s she disappeared to. Sorry, she can be a little coy.’

The woman in front of Finn moved with a grace Finn found very distracting. His mouth opened and closed like a fish. He came out of his reverie when Gill bumped into him and hissed, ‘Ask her what she wants?’

Finn blinked and the woman smiled. Before he had a chance to speak she said, ‘I wondered if you had any sugar only ours seems to have gotten a little damp in the move.’ She pushed a small white bowl across to him.

Finn glanced at it and back at her. ‘Of course.’ He collected the bowl. ‘I’ll give it a wipe out first and let you have some. And if there’s anything else you need, just knock.’

Gill took his place as Finn hurried to find his cloth. The woman in front of her was disconcerting her with her intense and open mouthed stare. ‘Finn is a dab hand at most things.’ She glanced around and came back to her new neighbour with a smile. ‘So what made you choose this plaice?’