This is a ship.

Today the sea is soup. Not metaphor soup, not dream soup—actual soup. Thick, golden, steaming gently. The boy insists it’s carrot. The woman insists it’s pumpkin. The cat insists by licking its paw and glaring that it is clearly fish. No one asks the captain. He just frowns and pretends not to smell onions.

Every wave sloshes like a ladle. Croutons bob past the hull. A spoon the size of a mast drifts lazily by, silver and smug. The crew leans over the railing to watch it pass. The boy mutters, “If we follow that spoon, we’ll find the bowl.” The cat sneezes as though to say: nonsense.

By noon, the sails puff with laughter instead of wind. Each gust is a giggle that rattles the rigging. When the woman ties her hair with rope, the rope wriggles like a delighted snake. She rolls her eyes, but it keeps making balloon-animal knots until her braid looks like a giraffe. The boy claps. The cat yawns. The captain sighs into his beard.

The ship’s bell rings, not with a clang, but a polite “ahem.” Everyone stops. The bell clears its throat again. Then it hums a jaunty tune—slightly off-key, but enthusiastic. The boy tries to whistle along; the cat drowns him out with a perfect trill.

At dusk, stars fall like confetti, bouncing off the deck before popping like soap bubbles. Each one bursts with a faint squeak, leaving behind glitter that clings to the wood. The crew tries sweeping it up, but the glitter just laughs and scuttles away like tiny crabs. The woman gives up and writes her name in sparkles across the mast. The mast, not to be outdone, writes one back: “HELLO.”

The boy giggles so hard he almost drops his lantern. The captain pretends he didn’t see it. The cat pretends it wrote the word itself.

By midnight, the soup-sea bubbles with music—violins, accordions, a kazoo somewhere in the distance. The crew doesn’t dance, exactly. They sway like kelp. The cat hops once, disdainfully, then curls up beside the mast with a smug purr that somehow keeps perfect time.

When dawn comes, the soup is gone, the glitter has vanished, and the sails no longer laugh. Only the faint smell of carrots (or pumpkin, or fish) lingers in the air.

And it still sails.