In any case, she did not owe the fish anything. She did not have to spend the rest of her life saving its life. She did that once. Wasn’t it enough? Assa thought that it was enough. More than enough.
Besides, if the fish was a great beast, equipped with teeth and claws, and if it was hungry, and if Assa was in close proximity to it in its fierce incarnation, it would have had no qualms about devouring Assa even if she had saved its life previously. Assa understood this. It was nature, and it was the way things were. Beings all worked to consume other beings. There could be nothing simpler in the universe and nothing more right.
Assa wondered what would happen if she leaped from the feather tips right now? Would she fall? Would she, indeed, be taken up by the wind?
Nothing of the sort, s
