Spring Carp
Spring Carp are the fish of an Ageless Spring’s pool: a few carp that were in the water when the stillness came and have not changed since. They swim and never feed, and so no angler has ever taken one on a hook. Around the springs they are a legend of patience; to those who have lifted one out of the water, a warning.
Appearance
A Spring Carp is a large, deep-bodied carp, as long as a forearm, its scales a dull gold edged with bronze, each one perfect, with no scar, no torn fin, no sign of age. Its eyes are clear and its barbels long. It moves slowly through the pool’s glowing water, turning in the same slow loops, and its fins stir the water without a sound; the only sound at the pool is the spring’s endless trickle. Seen from above, through the still, silver-blue water, it seems to glow faintly, as the water does. It has no smell.
Habitat and Range
They live only in the pools of Ageless Springs, a handful to a pool at most, and most springs have none. Each carp is the fish that happened to be there.
Behaviour and Temperament
A Spring Carp swims and nothing more. It does not feed, since nothing in the zone hungers, and it does not breed, rise to a fly, or flee a shadow. It circles the pool in the same path, as the spring’s trickle loops, and lets a hand pass near without turning.
Abilities
It is held, as everything in the zone is held, in the state it was in when the stillness reached it. A cut on its flank would stay open forever, and a hook in its lip would stay there; but it never takes a hook, because it never takes anything.
Life Cycle
None while the spring lasts. A carp lifted out of the zone meets the years it missed all at once: anglers who have netted one say it aged in their hands, its gold going grey, and was dust and bones before they had reached the edge of the glade.
Uses and Dangers
They give nothing. The Lingerers who guard the springs will not let anyone net them, saying that a fish taken is a fish killed and that the pool is not to be changed. Their danger is the danger of the spring itself: anglers who sit at the pool waiting for a carp to bite sit long, and a man who drinks to pass the time does not leave.
Lore and Belief
Anglers in the valleys near a spring tell of a golden carp that has been there since their grandfathers' grandfathers, which a patient angler will one day catch, and which grants a wish, or long life, or nothing, as the teller likes. In other valleys the same fish is a curse, and to dream of catching it means a death in the family. Of the carp in truth, only the first half of the tale is so: they are as old as the spring.