The day the fish lerned to fly

The day the fish learned to fly was a Wednesday. It was the third Wednesday in July and it was by no means a special day. It rained, maybe that makes everything a bit more logical. The days had been warm almost crushing hot. The heat had been dammed up for weeks and on that Wednesday it all came down with one enormous thunderstorm. The streets were steaming and hissing when the first rain hit the pavement. Huge billows hung in the air, they were amazingly warm. Despite of the thick drops raining from the sky we were sweating and the sweat mixed with the water falling down on us like waterfalls. You could hardly see the hand in front of your face and maybe that’s why we did not see the first fish flying. We stood under the porch of a small grocery, one of the kind you can only find in very small towns such like ours, of which we thought it might most likely withstand the deluge of water. Our feet were as naked as our legs. Most of us did not wear any more than a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, some only wore bathing suites. Like I said, it was very hot, too hot for any other kind of clothing. We would most likely have worn nothing if just the adults had allowed us to. We were at that certain age where nudity was without any meaning and full of innocence. We held the beams that held the roof, being afraid the flood would carry us away. The youngest and smallest of us clung to them like it was the only reasonable thing in the world. Maybe it was for them, maybe it was for us. I can’t say how many they were or when the first of them emerged nor when the first of us saw them. None of us said a word. We just stood there, clung to the beams and stared into the rain, every one of us sunken in their own world. Even the littlest of us hallowed the silence, seeming more grown up then all the years that came after this. They were hard to recognize when they finally came. The noise prevented us to hear anything in the rain so I can not say what kind of sound they made when they flew. Even when we would have liked to say something we would have had to scream. Even today I think that the rain would have swallowed every scream. My best friend was the first who saw them. It was pure coincidence that I looked at him while his eyes went wide and his moth became an O. His arm went into the air in slow-motion, fighting against the pressure of the falling water. It was the fact that something shook him enough to remove his arm from clinging to his save pole that made me follow his glance. I did not see them at first. They were moving incredibly fast like glomming thunderbolds. Their scales sparkled like they do when fish swim very near the surface and the sun has a chance to touch them with its rays. But the sun was vanished behind the thickest clouds I have seen in my entire life. The fish had a golden shimmer which made it easier to spot them in the rainygrey world. Like the mouth of my best friend our mouths turned into wide Os and more and more arms left their save spots clinging to something and started to point into the sky. Nobody but us was on the street so we pointed just for us. They had no wings, or at least none we could see. It looked like they were swimming. In the air or in the water which our air turned to. It was hard enough without the fish to remind our bodiws to keep basic functions like breathing intact. The fish swam in the air like it was the sea, like they had never done anything else. They flit around, swan through treetops and behind roofs. You could never watch one fish for very long. The wall of rain averted it as much as their quick movements. It was like watching rays of light, to fast for the eye to get caught. They were close enough for us to think that we might be able to touch them but to find out we would have had to try it. Not one of us did. We were to busy standing there, being astonished and watching them dive in the rain. Some swan in shoals, some alone. They shone in every color of the rainbow and some in colors no human being has a name for. We were so fascinated by the spectacle that we did not become aware that there were less and less with the decreasing rain. There were less and less bolts of color in the air and in the twinkling of an eye everything was over. We could breath again. The air was made of air again and not water, the sky got clear again and the clouds vanished one by one. The water ran down the streets and all it left was a puddle here or a small pool there. Puddles and thrashing grey fish which had lost their color and looked obscenely nude. They did not fly any more, all they did was thrashing and twitching until they gave up on their fate that they would never fly or swim again. Lifeless, dead things without any magic. Because what should it have been if not magic that made them fly? Until this very day the old ones say that it was the waves and the sea that brought the fish to the village. The storm made the waves so big and strong that they could carry the fish to the streets. Every oh so tenacious protest on out site was beaten down and laughed upon. They say it was the sea but we know better. The fish flew on that day and the day will come when they fly again. And maybe it will be my children then, gasping at them with o-mouths and when they tell me about the flying fish I will sight and tell them that fish can not fly. They will look at me with huge disappointed eyes, maybe even jell at me, stomping their feet on the ground and claiming their right but sooner or later they will believe me. However they will slow down every time they pass a stretch of water and will always walk through the rain without an umbrella. With the head in the neck, staring into the rainy sky and waiting unconsciously for a shimmer in the corner of the eye. For the day when the fish fly again.