Refuge from a cold fall walk.

My glasses steam as I enter the warm, humid store. As the mist leaves my sight, I see a bright fish duck into a crevice surrounded by swaying, flowery coral polyps. A grey fish, slender and seamed with muted rainbows, slides by a smoke bubble tunicate. Young clams, lips painted in outrages leapord prints and swirls of pink and purple like a lava lamp, pulse open and close while forced currents sweep the fine gravel beds they live in. A strange orange fish, like an alien dimsum, flutters waveringly past a suave black denizen with white markings. Milk white albino snakes weave through their brown and black friends. A chameleon pins one of his wandering eyes on me, the other one fiercely trained on a cricket the size of his head. A tortoise noses the corners of his wooden pen, long black claws scraping thoughtfully with the sounds of a scholars pen. My survey done, I go to finish my walk.