If wishes were fishes and Ali breathed the sea, the night would hold no fears.
The rain washed out the streetlights and blurred the city streets as they passed by. Everything was muted, tinted blue and grey, made to shimmer as though the rain had filled the streets and now they drove through wide, empty ocean caverns, once-houses forming the rock walls. Ali held his breath when they splashed through puddles, surfacing for an instant in a spray of white water and the slippery jolt of the wheels losing traction for the briefest of moments. Fish couldn’t breathe air, after all.
He grew bored of the scenery eventually, and kneaded his knees into the back of the seat in front of him. Kicks got shushed, and so Ali abandoned his tail and swam through the roads with his hand-fins. Round and round they went in lazy circles, until at last the sounds of his parents’ quiet conversation, muffled by the gas masks, lulled him to sleep.
***
It was still raining when he woke, though overhead the clouds were patchy enough that the moon could be glimpsed now and then. The silvery nighttime light - stars and moon drowning in the everlasting rain - fitted underwater better by far than the pale yellow lights of the city.
Ali’s breath fogged the window as he pressed his hands against the chilly glass, nose squashed flat as he counted the dark sea monsters they passed. Lumpen shapes on the verge, bushes and bodies obscured by the night. He didn’t see the gleam of bone, and the rain smudged outstretched hands into creeping vines and puddles. They were whales, and the windshield wipers dolphin-squeaked rhythmically out into the night to no response.
***
Ali’s dad climbed back into the car damp, his clothes holier than before. Tiny red starbursts marked the flesh beneath, little crabs crawling over his skin and spreading after every outing.
The gas station was an undersea city, lit by the pale grey light of the morning sun, partly obscured by clouds. They rolled and foamed overhead, disgorging pearly rain-drops from oyster-grey bellies made smooth by high strata winds. An overturned gas pump became a fallen column, the tubes creeping vines from an ancient plant invading old ruins. The neon from the price signs cast a sickly edge to the metal and cracked plastic of a destroyed kingdom.
Further down the road, the brilliant orange and scarlet lights of the burning fuel tanker were a glowing coral palace. Mermaids leaped and cavorted around it, arms thrown high. They span in circles and turned to follow the car, and Ali’s dad turned the CD player up higher. They accelerated, leaving mermaids scattered in their wake, and thrown stones fell short, unseen in the dark. Rain rattled on the rooftop, drumming with the tempo of the song, and in a little bubble of peace, Ali sailed on through the shadows on wings of imagination and dreams.
