The brief was restraint before ornament: Geru is the ochre-and-black folk stratum Mithila painters used before Bharni saturation and Kachni density took over the paper market in the 1970s — hematite rust ground, confident contour, pigment only where the symbol demands it. Vertical-bilateral symmetry solved the layout problem because twin Matsya fish cannot share a Kohbar narrative band without one swallowing the other; mirroring them on a central lotus stem lets each fish read as guardian of the same fertility axis, the way paired fish flank lotus ponds in threshold and wedding vocabulary. I kept fill selective — scale hatching and tri-colour fin stripes carry texture, but the ochre ground stays visible between motifs so the piece breathes like early Rahika line work rather than a fully saturated Bharni panel. The geometric border does the horror vacui job the centre refuses: triangle-and-hourglass side cells and lotus-petal scallops frame the fish without competing for the same stroke weight.