Small fish
A quiet school passes beneath the water surface.
There is more to a still pond than its reflection. Small fish travel beside one another with a little space between them, turn together and disappear among the plants along the bank. Their movement makes the narrow, silvery bodies easier to recognise.
A shared course
Small schools inhabit sufficiently large, clean bodies of water. They stay submerged and turn before narrow banks rather than cutting across land. Individual fish leave room for their neighbours, while the shared direction remains clear. When an Aqua approaches, the loose formation breaks apart and each fish takes a short path away from it. Occasionally individual fish sink deeper, especially when an Aqua approaches in the water. Their silvery bodies look smaller and fainter before they return towards the surface a little later. With some distance between them, their movement settles again. They also move to another part of the water ahead of an approaching biome conversion. Not every puddle, or every quiet look at a pond, reveals a school.
A dark outline beneath the surface is not always one of the small fish.
The pale belly
A dead fish may float in contaminated water. Its pale belly and lack of school movement distinguish it from living fish. When water turns poisonous, its living fish can also be left floating with pale bellies. Once the water clears, the bodies fade and vanish beneath the surface. Fresh schools may later pass through the clear water again. The floating bodies are environmental signs, not a portable food supply. Yet a pond cannot be judged from one brief glance alone: an absence of visible fish does not by itself prove that the water is poisonous.
