(Originally published at https://www.journeymouse.net/ on 8th December 2012)
In the beginning, there was water and there was Otter. Otter played Chase-Tail to entertain herself and the pretty bubbles she shed floated upward.
Otter got bored of chasing a tail that was so easy to catch. So she made fishes that she could chase and that tasted better than her tail when she caught them. Their scales fell through the water as Otter ate.
Then Otter found a fish that had grown too big and wanted to chase her back. Otter liked to tease the big fish by twisting and turning just in front of it as it chased her.
When she got tired, she thought it would be more fun to tease the big fish by hiding and she made a bundle of seaweed. But the seaweed bundle floated upward like one of her bubbles and left the big fish behind.
Otter looked out from the seaweed bundle at something she had never seen before. The water had a top. When she looked up into the dark above-water she could see other bubbles gleaming far above her.
Otter was hungry so she dove back into the water to chase the little fishes. As she twisted and turned after the silver flashes, the big fish saw her and started chasing, too.
Otter dove straight down to avoid the big fish. She dove so far that she left the big fish behind and found something else she had never seen before. The water had a bottom as well as a top!
Otter picked up a piece of the silvery stuff on the bottom and sniffed at it. It looked like a scale from a little fish. She wondered what it would look like in her bubble.
Otter swam back up to her seaweed bundle and held the scale up so she could see it in in the light from the other bubbles high above. It shone and sparkled and had lots of different colours beneath the silver.
Otter wanted more of these scales, so she dropped the one she held on her seaweed bundle and dove to find another. When she got back, she looked for the first scale but couldn't find it. She put the second scale down and looked everywhere for the first.
Otter dove again to get a scale to replace the first but when she got back she couldn't find the second scale, either! So Otter dove and and dove and dove, replacing the scales she couldn't find when she came back to her seaweed bundle.
After a while, Otter found that her seaweed bundle was resting on a great pile of scales that rose from the bottom of the water and passed the top!
The pile looked pretty in the light above-water and Otter admired her work. She swam up and down and around the pile, admiring it from all sides.
A large fish tried to chase Otter while she swam around her pile of scales. She swam to the other side of the pile but the big fish followed her.
Otter ran up her pile of scales to hide in the seaweed bundle. When she got there, she realised the big fish couldn't follow her out of the water. She had great fun standing on the edge of the water and teasing it!
When she tired of teasing the big fish, Otter curled up in her seaweed bundle on her pile of shiny scales and dreamt of what she would make tomorrow.