Undesirable

Chapter 1

Standing knee-deep in seawater is not how I'd pictured spending life. At seventeen, I thought I would be married, with a child - or at least expecting one - living in a small house with my husband, in my village by the sea. Instead, I'm nearly twenty-one, crouching over the water's surface, struggling to catch fish. The waves are teaming with them, whizzing around my legs and ankles, taunting me with their presence. If fish were intelligent, they would be rolling about laughing at me, entertained by the game they appear to be playing. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if they already are. My lack of fishing skills are laughable to anyone.

At fifteen, I finished school and was forced to start working as a land fisher with the rest of my unmarried classmates. We were made to stand in the sea and fill baskets strapped to our backs, with any type of fish we could catch. Nearly six years later, and I'm still here.

You'd think after all this time, I'd actually be good at my job. But unfortunately for me, I'm far from it. It would be easier if I had a spear or some sort of knife to pierce them with, but we are not permitted to use one, in fear that we will turn it into some sort of weapon and go on a murderous rampage through the village. With the little food I eat, they are lucky I have enough strength to get out of bed and travel to work.

To make matters worse, not only do you have to catch the fish, you also need to keep hold of it whilst it flails around in your hands, gasping for breath, before throwing it into your basket. It isn't a pretty sight. On my first day, I was traumatized. I couldn't sleep for weeks. The guilt from causing the death of the only fish I caught ate me alive. Ironic really, since we then ate that fish the same evening. My older sister, Ana, told me that the sinking feeling in my gut was the fish's spirit, taking its revenge on me for killing it. That then led to my whole family arguing, both me and my sister being sent to bed early for annoying our parents, and me not speaking to Ana for two days. What I would give for her to be back home with us to have those arguments again.

You get used to the fish dying in your hands - after a while at least - but the image is still haunting.

"Fifty-one," My friend, Kya, shouts, throwing yet another fish into her basket. Of course, she has to be a natural at it, she is a natural at everything. She even looks great doing it. Droplets from the sea glisten under the sun's light, making her dark olive skin appear as if it's sparkling, and whisps of her black, sea-damp hair dance gracefully in the breeze. It is very annoying. 

For every fish I catch, she catches twenty, and just to rub it in my face even more, she counts them as she goes. Everyone around her rolls their eyes and whispers various insults about her to their friends. But Kya doesn't mind. She's never given a second thought to what people think about her. She couldn't care less if she tried.

"What number are you on, Sav?" She teases me, knowing full well I'm nowhere close to hers. At the end of the day, we receive a quarter of our findings to take home as payment for our work. The most I have taken back with me is three, a pitiable amount when compared to that of Kya's. She usually makes enough to feed her family three times a day, a fact her mother loves to boast about to everyone in the village. My family are lucky if we get one fish per person. My mother can't wait for my younger sister, Karissa, to be old enough to start work; that is if she doesn't get married before then.

"You know, you need to move your body to catch the fish, Sav," Kya calls to me, breaking me away from my thoughts. Sarcasm is yet another of her many talents. One, to my dismay, she uses quite frequently.

"I was just thinking," I reply, focusing my mind back on my work. My basket isn't even a quarter of the way full yet, and the majority of what's inside it consists of water. I need to concentrate instead of getting distracted by my thoughts. My mother always says, that from a young age, my mind would travel off to distant worlds. She claims the gods trying to send me a message, and if I just listened hard enough, I would hear it. She also claims that my father annoyed Neptune once, back when he was a fisherman, and that's why I'm so bad at land fishing. I just wish the gods would just make up their minds if they liked me or not, because if she's right, they are sending me mixed messages.