By Roz White

It has occasionally been attempted, so we are told, to send messages to that half-fabled Outside World; over the years (centuries), odd folk (some odder than others) have tied messages to the legs of birds (the birds usually peck them off and then eat them), concocted methods of communicating by smoke-signal (invariably swallowed up in the all-pervading mists and vapours of Hopeless). We could go on, but the underlying message is surely clear: messages rarely if ever make it out of Hopeless.

Recently, one reason for this repeated failure of communication has become a little clearer. It was only the other week when, during one of her occasional walks along the sea-shore, Miss White, of whom it has often been said, claimed on her return to have observed Professor Weatherpenny throwing a bottle into the waves. When questioned as to the reason for such peculiar behaviour, even by her standards (which are generally low indeed), the Professor explained that the bottle contained a message. Her insistence that this message was a scientific and fully researched treatise on the island and not merely a plea for rescue cut little ice.

Whichever was actually the truth was rendered largely irrelevant, however, for a day or two later a most peculiar piece of flotsam returned the bottle to its erstwhile owner. The thing washed ashore turned out to be a peculiar form of sea-creature with some rather odd (even by Hopeless standards) features. It was not dead – far from it, though it clearly preferred to be in the water than out of it. On what we presume was its back, it sported a very limp and listless – one might even call it doleful, a term very much in keeping with its facial features, as it happened. Still, no creature can particularly help how it looks – just ask Mr Igneous from The Puddle Inn – but the multitude who came to view the creature did rather decide that it could, if it so wished, modify its behaviour.

And this, finally*, brings us back to the matter of the Professor’s bottle-message: for it was promptly coughed up by the creature, almost right at Weatherpenny’s feet. As others in the crowd began to feel that it might perhaps be approaching lunchtime and brought out picnic-things, and certainly when Silas Grimgach, part-time brewer and barkeeper, began offering his own rather dangerous wares for sale, the animal went practically berserk. Every bottle, no matter the size, hue or even contents, appeared to be a subject of insatiable curiosity to it, and it immediately rampaged towards every new specimen, trampling men, women and children (as well as dogs, cats, other sea-denizens…) in its path. A good many residents of the islands found themselves with no option but to risk life-and-limb to rescue their glassware, for such things are hard to come by in Hopeless and people tend to treasure even the humble beer-bottle as heirlooms (as an Aside, Professor Weatherpenny was subsequently seriously chastised for her wanton disposal of such a valuable item).

Thus was the Bottle-Nosey Dole-Fin named and described (by the Professor, yet again), and added to the ever-lengthening list of Strange Things Around Hopeless (her Treatise on this, if nothing else, can be verified and even studied by anyone sufficiently bored). Driven from the strand and from every other picnic-area by incensed owners of bottles, wine-glasses and even spectacles across the island, we conjecture that there must be some level of breeding population in the oceans around Hopeless, and if their ability to discern glass artefacts is even half as keen amid the waves as it appears to be on land, then we can confidently predict that the bottle has yet to be made which might withstand their energetic attentions.

*the blame for such a lengthy discourse is laid firmly (by Miss White) at the feet of Professor Weatherpenny, since she is accused of being Academic and therefore inclined to verbosity. But since on some level we suspect that Miss White and the Professor are one and the same, the apple, as they say, has not really fallen very far from the tree.

(You can find more of Roz’s work on her Amazon page – https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Roz-White/author/B00W1L8QKW )