Chapter 29: The Drop of Water

The Martian dawn arrived without birds.

No waves.

No rain.

Only the silent rust-red horizon stretching beyond the glass dome.

Every morning I watered the small acorn I had planted. It had not yet become a tree, nor even a sapling. It remained hidden beneath the soil, carrying its future in complete silence.

As a single drop of water fell from the watering can, it landed softly upon the ground.

But instead of disappearing into the soil, it remained perfectly still.

It shimmered.

Inside its tiny sphere, I thought I saw an ocean.

Then the drop spoke.

"Do not look at me because I am small," it whispered.

"Look at me because I am old."

I knelt beside it.

"How old?"

The drop trembled, catching the pale sunlight of Mars.

"I was already here before your world had continents."

I remained silent.

"I condensed from the breath of a young planet, when Earth was still wrapped in fire. I cooled upon volcanic stone before there were forests, before there were mountains, before there was a single living cell."

Its surface rippled gently.

"I have never stopped travelling."

 

"I have been ocean."

"I have been cloud."

"I have been snow."

"I have slept beneath glaciers for thousands of years."

"I have flowed through rivers whose names no one remembers."

"I have rested inside crystals deep beneath mountains."

Then its voice became softer.

"I have lived inside creatures."

"I flowed through the veins of dinosaurs."

"I became the blood of mammoths."

"I was carried by migrating birds."

"I became milk."

"I became tears."

 

I smiled.

"Were you ever in my home?"

The drop glowed like polished glass.

"I remember a wooden bucket."

My heart stopped.

"There was a stone well surrounded by fig trees and wild herbs."

I whispered,

"Alarga..."

The drop continued.

"A man lowered the bucket with rough hands worn by work."

"He drank first."

"Then he offered the water to everyone else."

"I remember laughter beside the well."

"I remember smoke rising from the evening fire."

"I remember fish roasting beneath the stars."

I closed my eyes.

It was Vourvourou.

It remembered.

 

"I also remember a little girl."

My breathing slowed.

"She carried a shell in her pocket."

"Every few minutes she filled it with seawater."

"She believed she was collecting pieces of the sea."

I laughed quietly.

"I was that girl."

"No," answered the drop.

"You still are."

 

The tiny sphere reflected the Martian sky.

"You humans believe you drink water."

"In truth..."

"...water remembers you."

 

I looked toward the greenhouse.

"You travelled billions of years to arrive here."

The drop answered gently.

"I did not arrive."

"I simply continued."

"I have never belonged to rivers."

"I have never belonged to oceans."

"I have never belonged to nations."

"I have only belonged..."

"...to the journey."

 

For a long time, neither of us spoke.

The silence felt older than language.

Then I asked the question that had quietly waited inside me.

"Will you remember me?"

The drop remained perfectly still.

"When your bones have become dust..."

"When Mars has changed..."

"When your Sun has become a white dwarf..."

"When other beings drink from other oceans beneath another sky..."

"I will still carry one invisible memory."

"The warmth of your hands."

 

The drop slowly disappeared into the Martian soil.

No sound.

No farewell.

Only a circle of darker earth where new life might one day begin.

I looked toward the horizon.

Perhaps immortality was never meant for people.

Perhaps it belonged to journeys.

And perhaps...

every glass of water

contains

the oldest story

ever told.

...to be continued...