Quarry

SATURDAY APRIL 25, 2015

I felt hot. I slowly opened my eyes. This was the first time I opened them. The first vision I had was intense light. I slowly adjusted my eyes around. It was the sun. I was facing up in this plastic bag of water filled with tilapia fingerlings like me. We were restless, wiggling around. Then suddenly some enormous thing slowly released all 70 of us one by one from the plastic bag. And into a bigger body of water that was simply endless. It was the river – the Iponan River to be exact. Of course I wouldn’t know the name of the river because I’m just tilapia. You my dear readers would know it.

But the moment I was released into the colder river, I knew it was right at the mouth. From my tiny viewpoint, I could see Macajalar Bay into the distance. Again, I would not know that particular name obviously. Then we the school of tilapia realized that we must swim upstream because it’s the water of our birth. I didn’t know what collectively made us think of that. Perhaps it was the animal instinct inside. So we swam and we swam, enduring the heat of Summer 2015. At least it was colder here than in that plastic bag.

The water here at Iponan River was distinctly clear. Two years ago, it wasn’t like this. It was chocolate brown. Again, I wouldn’t know any of that. Heck, I wasn’t born yet at the time. And so we continued swimming.

A few hours later as the sun was about to set, I looked above. I saw a bridge filled with people, both pedestrians and motorists inside their vehicles. That turned out to be Barra Bridge. I could hear the people chattering. Of course, they were all gibberish to me. But translated into human language, it would sound like this, “Tin-aw na lagi ang suba, lubog man ni sa una!”

And so we continued swimming. Dusk came. It was my first night in the big wide river. I was scared. We were all scared. Were there predators lurking somewhere? Thankfully, the night passed uneventfully. By dawn, we already reached the San Simon bank. I saw a human lady bathing. A few meters on, I saw another human lady doing the laundry. A few meters more and there were around five boys leisurely soaking.

***

SATURDAY JULY 4, 2015

The rainy days are here, the frogs are croaking in the distance in this Pagalungan riverbank 34.85 kilometers south of the river’s mouth. I have grown to 10 cm long. I can claim that I’m now an adult tilapia ready to spawn. (Nope not the Call of Duty kind, it’s the tilapia kind.) But first, I need a female mate. Uhh…where to find…where to find? Uhuh, there she is! For humans’ sake, I need to call her a name. “Hey ladyfish, can I call you Angelica?” She wiggles back. Oh yeah, you’re my Angelica from now on. Nope, she wiggles away. *Sigh*….I need to court her first. But before that, I need to build a nest to impress her. I instinctively know how to build one – I will form a circular pit in the mud. Suddenly, the whole world shakes. I reflexively swim to the surface and am horrified. It is a huge machine making a whirring sound. I scream.