:| What Can't Be Taught |: {shxta}

Her eyes scanned through the one line quickly, and an eyebrow started crawling toward the top of her head. Wasting his time? Wow, he’s hopeless. It became clear to her that this wasn’t training meant for a replacement—this was training to improve his skills. Meira gave him a quick glance before she started scribbling again. “That’s for me to judge after this lesson. Why don’t you show me what you can do? There are plenty of fish out today.” The debris must have either settled or been washed ashore in this area.

Meira looked back at him to see a look of worry on his face. Was he thinking about how could a small girl his age possibly help him? She didn’t blame him; she had gotten those looks many times when she first started working. But what she lacked in size, she gained in skill from her father. He had taught her how to use her own strengths to generate enough power, to maneuver her short stature to become more precise. He had taught her how to use her eyes and her sense of touch to create a sturdy net.

Handing another harpoon to Climax and holding a net in her other hand, she gave him a look as if to pressure him into trying. It was unconventional to test fishing skills with a harpoon—most learned to use their hands or a rod first—but Climax looked like he had the body type to do it. If Meira was able to successfully harpoon fish, then surely he had the power to do the same. The question was whether he had the technique and patience to be effective.

Reaching for the stylus that she had tucked behind her ear, she started scribbling some more. “Maybe I’ll be able to help. Maybe I won’t. But I’m not going to stop here, so you might as well try to catch some dinner.”

Had I been just as wide-eyed when I was handed my first harpoon? It was a rite of passage, a mark that I had become a true fisherman, but the journey to completely master the skill was long and arduous. I had to find out how far he had gone. It was a skill that should have been taught at school or at least apprenticeship, but Father wanted me to hold my first harpoon at a younger age. Perhaps it was a way for the both of us to cope with Mama’s death. Perhaps he simply wanted me to become natural with it.

But I could tell that Climax was having trouble with the idea of using a harpoon. It wasn’t reluctance; it was the unfamiliarity one felt when they weren’t trained to use a harpoon. What has anyone been teaching him? His words barely reached my ears—my hearing still wasn’t completely gone, however diminished it was becoming—but he couldn’t hide any uncertainty and I wasn’t sure he wanted to. I gave him an assertive nod. If he had never held a harpoon before, it was even better. Now, I could see what the baseline of skill.

He took advantage of the paper and stylus, writing how he didn’t like fishing and how he viewed it as obligatory. Well, either way, I’m gonna do my best. He was right, however, that perhaps using a harpoon wasn’t the best way to go. “I just want to see what potential you have with a harpoon. If a lot of work needs to be done, we can practice catching.”

Catching was an activity that many children in District 4 learned: how to stand waist deep in water and catch a fish with their bare hands. It was very difficult and seldom were the kids able to catch the fish, but it wasn’t until my father had me do the activity over and over again that I understood why they made the kids do it. Besides being the most basic exercise a fisherman could do, it taught fishermen what type of patterns the fish displayed, especially when they sensed danger. Pretty soon, it became a game of strategy: who was going to outsmart the other.

I never found out if this reason was ever uncovered for students at school. I had lost touch with many of my classmates since my parents pulled me out, and while there was a good chance I worked with them, I had no way of knowing. “Maybe the 18th year is what you needed to discover the true fisherman inside of you,” I scribbled, hoping it could give him some hope.

He was finally starting to warm up to me, I could see it from the smile on his face. He might have still been a little reluctant, but he seemed excited to get started. I didn’t need the expression on his face to tell me that he needed a lot of help; simply the way he tried to get into position was clunky. Who had been teaching him recently? Did they really not graduate him from rods? And his parents? Had they lost hope for him? Perhaps not as they had hired me to try to teach him, but why hadn’t they tried to help when he was younger, just as my father had done for me?

I walked over to him, maneuvering my small body so that I could adjust his grip on the harpoon and brought his arm back so that it formed an obtuse angle. Using my feet while holding the harpoon balanced, I nudged his feet further apart so he could establish a stronger base. If only there was a way to freeze him in place, he would have looked like one of the diagrams in their textbooks at school. I held my hand up as if to tell him to stay in place as I reached over for my own harpoon.

I mimicked his form before going through the motions slowly, so he could see what he was supposed to do next. Turn the body, use the back leg for extra power, follow through as the arm released the harpoon. I looked back at him to see that he had seen what I had been trying to do. After watching him go through the movements a few times, I nodded before looking back at the ocean. Going through the movements only did so much; he wouldn’t understand unless he saw what it was like in action.

My eyes followed the patterns of the water, trying to spot any disturbances, before my body relaxed as I fell into position. Only focusing with my eyes and shutting out all my other senses, I launched the harpoon into the water and went after it to see if I had caught a fish. And sure enough, at the end of my harpoon, speared through the middle, was a fish. Smiling, I looked back at Climax, giving him a nod of reassurance while telling him to throw his harpoon.

Whatever focus he lacked when he first approached me was pouring into his mind and body now. His movements were still mechanical, still needed much work, but it looked like he was trying to tap into any inner potential he had. And he did have potential. Just as I had predicted, he had power and even better, he had accuracy. Perhaps whatever tricks the school had been teaching him didn’t work, but there was no denying that maybe the harpoon was the way to go.

But he still needed to learn the waters. I gave him a big smile, to let him know that he had done well, before pulling out the piece of paper again. “See? Perhaps it is the eighteenth year where everything changes.” His first try with the harpoon was a good indicator. “But first, we must get you acquainted with the water before refine your skill with the harpoon.” I handed him the piece of paper before jumping into the shallower part of the water, off to the side of the dock. Motioning for him to join me, I looked around me to make sure that there was enough fish in the area to try the exercise.

As he walked to me, I pulled out another piece of paper, writing down my next words so that I would have them ready by the time he was where I was. “You remember the exercise known as catching?” It would have been foolish if he didn’t; the schools in District 4 were notorious in teaching that exercise to all of the children. However, there was a good chance that they stopped having the children participate once they became older. By the time they were Climax’s age, who knew if they still remembered how to catch. Holding the paper in my non-dominant hand, I raised one of my hands up in the ready position as my eyes scanned for a fish. There were several, but not enough for me to have a good chance of grabbing one.

Sure enough, as my hand took the plunge and tried to intercept a fish, its slippery body shot through my hand. I sighed, knowing that feeling the fish was considered good enough, but for me, it was not enough. My father had taught me better than that. “See if you can at least feel the fish between your fingers. Use your eyes to follow the fish.”