Instead of using the concept of fluid flow as a modeling analog to
conservation of energy, I prefer to model in terms of a box of pennies. I
can think of the number of heads as KE and the number of tails as PE. If I
shake the box, I can come up with many combinations of heads and tails that
conserve the total number of coins. There is no "flow" of headness or
tailness because each coin is entirely independent of the others. One coin
changing from head to tails does not transfer any property to any of the
other coins - yet there is a conservation of the sum.