Just beneath the surface of the stream some white, translucent guppies swam against the current. There was a mamma guppy, a father guppy, and two little baby guppies- a boy and a girl. They were guppies but they had big heads like cat-fish with bulging white eyes. They swam the same speed as the current so they didn’t move anywhere even after hours of swimming.

Below them the pebbles were green and turquoise and tiny crabs sidled this way and that. Occasionally an electric eel shot by underneath them, going upstream. The bank of the stream was rocky and had a couple of empty soda bottles bobbing along, caught on something.

One afternoon the sky above the stream darkened and raindrops dropped like little bombs into the water. Beneath the surface the girl guppy turned to her brother. “Try it at least once,” she said. He looked at her, both of them swimming and swimming. Then, when the next eel passed, he shot down and bit at it, feeling the jolt of an electric shock before the eel disappeared upstream. The little guppy spun around, discombobulated, and bumped his head into a submerged paint can. When he finally got his bearings he was startled to see he had drifted far downstream. An hour later, after swimming furiously, he managed to catch back up with his family.

“Hey,” he said to the girl guppy. “That was weird.”

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