Tewilliger

Word count: 300

         

Tewilliger was a most unusual fish.  So he was lucky to have found a co-operative human.  The first thing he had needed to communicate to Matilda was about his water.  Of course, he needed to be in water.  However, he didn’t care to live in tap water. 

It had taken him several days to get the message to Matilda—who he considered to be dim at best.  Bottled water only!  Preferably imported bottled water, with the thinnest slice of lime.  That had been the most difficult thing to get into her head.  Lemons and limes were NOT interchangeable.

Then there had been the sleeping problem.  An outcast at the pet store, he had taken early on to studying the humans around him.  So, he had noticed that Matilda spent a good part of the time in a bed.  He wanted one of those. 

The difficulty had arisen because of Matilda’s mental shortfalls.  She ‘got’ that he wanted a pillow in his bowl, but the stupid cow kept putting tiny pillows made from cotton batting in.  Of course, they just got lumpy.  After days of using all his mind-power, he had gotten her to see it needed to be filled with air.  And another four days to realize she needed to put birdshot in first.  That kept it submerged.

Now he could watch TV.  He liked the how-to shows on PBS. Tewilliger was particularly taken by a painting program.  He was sure he would paint superb watercolors if he just had a paintbrush.  He’d been concentrating for weeks—but so far, all Matilda had procured were paint-rollers.  He feared this might be too much for her.  And perhaps it was just as well—for he couldn’t think of how he was going to prevent the paint from dissolving in his bowl.