Drop Bible

In the beginning, there was Cirrus.

Cirrus was white and puffy. It was spacious, yet light as an atom. The people of Cirrus, Particles, floated around happily, doing whatever they pleased, going wherever they wanted.

But they never left Cirrus, for they’d never thought of it — why bother when everyone was happy?

However, one day, a particularly curious Party — that’s what Particles called themselves — ventured outside of his puffy kingdom and, floating through the air, stumbled upon the people of Misties in the world of Stratus.

Stratus was darker than Cirrus, and although most of its people floated freely around, some of them were bound into darker masses called Droplets at its bottom.

“In our world, everyone can dance around freely,” he declared to the Droplets. When they stared at him incredulously, he said, “Come with me, I’ll show you!”

So the Party led the Misties back to Cirrus. As soon as they arrived, all the Droplets instantly melted away, setting their captives free. The Party was awarded for his courage, and many explorers followed in his footsteps, scattering to search for similar new worlds.

Some of them came back alone and disappointed, but most returned with whole new people in their wakes, for there were, in fact, many inhabited worlds out there. And each time they crossed the kingdom's border, Droplets melted away immediately.

The Cirrian Empire prospered nebulously in this way, expanding with each discovery, its population now a hundred times greater than before the Party’s Quest. The people from the annexed quickly began calling themselves Particles, thus becoming part of a large homogeneous Cirrial nation.

But the more worlds the Empire absorbed, the darker it got, and soon the Droplets started to form at the bottom of the Particles’ homeworld.

It also got colder. It was first thought that the Droplets caused the cold, but it was the other way around — the colder it got, the more Droplets formed, as if the cold made people huddle together to warm up.

When the underworld became so dark that the Parties could see nothing past their own Droplet, there was a big explosion, and a streak of light erupted from Cirrus into the abyss.

Before anyone could react, the Droplets began to plummet wildly into the darkness.

Not a single Party in the whole Cirrus, indigenous or otherwise, was spared from this fate. This Rain — as it would later be named — marked the fall of the Cirrian Empire. By the end of it, there was not a single white puff — a symbol of its people's freedom — left in its place.

As the Parties fell, it got even colder, and the bonds within the Droplets tightened so much that when they landed, all of the people were entirely immobile — The Droplets had turned into Crystals.

That was the beginning of the Ice Captivity. Not much happened in this period, for no one had much control over their movements in the merciless, rigid form of Crystals. Only on the warmer, brighter days did the bonds in some of the upper Crystals loosen, converting them back to Droplets.

That's when the Parties at least got to complain about the good old days, if not much else, for they couldn't even speak inside of Crystals. Most of them yearned for the pre-rain days, and some of the few Cirrus natives even rhapsodized about the pre-empire period.

“Curse that curious Party and the trouble he bestowed upon us,” they would growl. “Had it not been for him, we would still be free and happy.”

“And warm,” someone would add, painfully reminding them of the bitter cold surrounding them.

But these dialogues didn’t last long; as soon as night fell, the Parties were locked back into Crystals.

No one knows for sure how long the Ice Captivity lasted. Some say it lasted only a few days, while others argue it was months, maybe even years, before the Stream Exodus.

The longer the days were, the thicker the layer of upper Droplets became, until one day, some Droplets even survived the night. It wasn’t much later that the Crystals at the bottom melted too and started to glide through the hole in the bedrock. The rest of the Droplets followed along, and soon everyone was trickling down the rocky slope.

This was the last time the entire Cirrial nation was in a single place, because many foreign Droplets joined the Stream down the line, increasing its volume thousandfold and separating the Parties from their fellow citizens.

The Stream then branched into dozens of smaller flows, each heading in a different direction. Although all of them eventually flowed into the Chosen Lake, their entry points were so far away from each other that two Cirrian Droplets from separate flows had no chance of ever meeting again, for the population of the Lake was greater than a trillion trillion Cirrian Empires.

That’s how the Cirrians joined the beautiful Lake life. Very soon, they grew accustomed to the conditions in the Lake and assimilated into its population. The children of the Ice Captives became so native to the place that they began calling themselves Lakers, just as their ancestors had once adopted the Cirrian identity.

That’s how the Promised Lake became for the Droplets just what the original Cirrus had been for the Particles. Although there was some competition for living in the warmer areas — in the summer, on the surface, and in the winter, at the bottom — Life in the Lake was very comfortable, peaceful, and predictable.

Also, no one complained about their Droplet form anymore after the Ice Captivity; the Parties had learned to cooperate with their Droplet-mates so well that the Droplet had become a standard unit of life, and the Parties within it were indistinguishable from one another.

The temperature standards had also lowered from the Empire days, and most of the Droplets enjoyed the stable heat that ruled the Lake. Only the upper part was susceptible to the cold at night, when a layer or two would turn to Crystal. However, these upper-class citizens also enjoyed most of the heat during the day; as soon as the light returned, their Crystals melted away, and they could enjoy movement if they were lucky enough to catch one of the surface currents.

In autumn, the Lake saw an increase in population due to the Rains. Still, the most significant growth happened in the spring, when the immigrants trickled in through the Mountain Stream, just like the Cirrians themselves arrived.

During the hottest summer days, some of the upper Droplets would melt, sending their Parties into the air. Most of them fell back below the surface and were absorbed by the nearest Droplet — that’s how Droplets reproduced, by exchanging Particles — but some were blown away and never returned.

However, these disappearances were a calculated risk of the summer high life, and no one paid them much attention. The fear of Death took hold of the Lakers only after the Eruption of the Dam.

One night, just before dawn, a hole suddenly appeared in the Lake’s bottom, and millions of sleeping Droplets were sucked into it before they realised what was happening. Then, after a few minutes of this terrifying massacre, the hole disappeared on its own, just as it had appeared.

The rumours of the incident spread quickly across the Lake, and by midday, not a single Droplet wasn't talking about it. Although it was now winter, and the upper class would be frozen at night, the competition for sleeping on the surface was greater that evening than in the hottest summer days. And it wasn't in vain: that night, no fewer than twenty holes appeared at the bottom and remained open for most of the night, draining billions and billions of Droplets.

The panic that consumed the Lake in the morning was unlike anything the King of the Lake had ever seen.

“Well, I'll be dammed,” he exclaimed from his terrace, watching the strong currents colliding in a whirlpool above him. He was illiterate, as kings usually are, and it was from his exclamation that the wall with the lethal holes got to be called the Dam.

Illiterate though he was, he wasn’t stupid, and he knew there was no point in being a king who ruled only this havoc. In fact, that couldn't even be called ruling, for he had no control over them.

“I’ll be dammed”, he repeated more loudly. “What can we do about this?”

Getting no reply, he turned around only to find the chamber empty. All his advisors had escaped from the Royal Palace towards the surface and were now participating in the very chaos the King wanted them to handle.

But there was nothing to be done. Every night, the same twenty holes opened in the Dam, and they sucked away billions of Droplets until dawn, when they closed, only to be open again at nightfall.

Once tranquil and peaceful, Lake life had now turned into a perennial struggle for survival. No one reproduced or slept anymore, not to mention play or pleasure. When the newcomers trickled in that spring, they found themselves in a place much worse than the Ice they had just escaped. There was no one to greet them or show them around; upon arrival, they were instantly sucked into the never-ending roulette of life and death, which by now dominated every inch of the Lake.

“Well, I'll be dammed,” grumbled the King one autumn morning. “What are we going to do about this?”

Old habits die hard, and the King kept asking the same question every morning, never getting an answer.

However, he got it that day.

“We must first steady everyone,” said a powerful voice behind him.

The King turned around and saw a young Droplet standing in the doorway. It was unusually rich in calcium and had only three Particles, but despite its minuscule size, it radiated with a kind of power the King had always wished for, but never possessed, and the King found himself inexplicably drawn to it.

“And how do you propose we do that, young sir?” he asked.

“May I borrow a couple of your guards, Your Highness?” the Calcified asked, politely. “Nineteen of them, to be precise?”

Though he would have refused to surrender even one of his guards to anyone else in such a chaotic time, the King conceded without a moment’s pause, and soon the Calcified stormed out of the Royal Palace with the King's nineteen best men in his wake.

King had expected them to head toward the fulcrum of the storm, to calm the people as promised, but they turned in the opposite direction; they were marching straight toward the Dam.

“Guards, guards!” he yelled furiously at the remains of his guard. “That Droplet has just kidnapped my best armsmen. Go after him, go get him!”

Thus, the rest of his guard was dispatched toward the Dam as well, but they arrived too late to catch their predecessors.

When the Calcified reached the Dam, he dispatched the nineteen Droplets under his command to cover the nineteen holes in the Dam. At the same time, he took the remaining one, and they all started pounding on them as vigorously as possible. This pounding reverberated loudly across the whole Lake.

It was the same metal sound that accompanied the hole opening each evening, the sound that would’ve haunted everyone in their nightmares had they ever stopped to sleep.

The sound of Death himself.

But the timing was wrong; it was still morning, and the holes had just closed. The whirlpool of panic stopped in shock, and the silence permeated the Lake for the first time in months.

Everyone gaped open-mouthed at the Dam and the twenty Droplets producing this horrible sound. Now that he had gotten everyone's attention, the Calcified ordered the pounding to stop and floated toward the fulcrum of the frozen storm, as he addressed the nation.

“My dear Lakers,” he said solemnly, “I have dived into your beautiful land in yesternight’s Rain, only to find it unrecognizable, incomparable to what it was like when I was last here.

“I know that you don't recognize me anymore, because the insomnia depleted your memories, but I had been your cocitizen for many a season, floating and diving and soaking in the joys of the Lake alongside you. But that changed one wintry night, when I fell asleep on that very hole. When I woke up, I was speeding headlong through the darkness.

“I was terrified; we all were. But we couldn't move, because the stream was too strong. We couldn’t talk either, because the roar around us was deafening. We only felt each other’s presence as we knocked into one another forcefully over and over again.

Suddenly, we were blinded by the light, and the stream became a fall. The flow dispersed into tiny jets, all headed toward a large wheel, which was constantly spinning under the force of our multitudes. We bounced from it, contributing to its rotation, and were then catapulted into the air, where we continued our freefall, every man for himself, in the form not unlike Rain.

“When we landed in the River, I first thought I was by some magic transported back to the Lake; everything was warm and peaceful, and the Riveners were as kind a people as you once were. The only difference was that the River was not static, but moved gently yet persistently, a strong current pushing it steadily along. However, that current didn't affect everyday life in a bad way; on the contrary, it warmed the whole place and prevented the surface from ever freezing. I enjoyed the time in the River; I've spent it in playing with the current — which was fastest in the middle, and slower at the rim — and met some wonderful people from all over the world, some of whom had already passed this way.

That's how I found out about the Ocean even before I got there. They told me that the place we were going was like the largest Lake ever known; not even the oldest Droplets, who’d walked this road dozens of times, had ever seen anything greater than the Ocean. It’s limitless, they told me, as we drifted in the River’s centre, eager to get there.

“I cannot swear to the Ocean’s limitlessness, but I didn’t meet its bottom or any other border, no matter how far I swam. It’s truly a place like no other; wherever I was, I was surrounded by myriads of Droplets, floating in all directions as far as the eye could reach. And these Droplets aren’t like us, or the Riveners; in the Delta — that’s the Ocean’s Gate — everyone has to be baptised in Salt to pass into the Ocean’s sacred land. That is why I am so white, unlike you — but that’s not the Salt I got from the Ocean, but the one I scraped from the Stream floor on the way here.

“Namely, when I left the Ocean’s surface one summer day, my Salt had left me along with my Droplet; all my Particles separated from each other, floating freely into the heavens.

That’s how I got into Cirrus, like the one my grandpa lived in. It felt like I was back in that bedtime story he’d told me when I was little. At first, we were all free, but as the Empire expanded, it got darker, and soon we were all in the Rain. However, since it was summer, instead of the Ice Captivity, we landed in the Mountain Stream, which then took us here, only to find the grave doom that had come upon your land.

It was already nightfall by the time that the Salty — for he wasn’t Calcified as the King had thought — had finished his story. The crowd had listened to him intently all day long, and everyone liked what they heard; the promised life in the warm River, and even warmer Ocean sounded like a trip they would like to enjoy, not one they should fear.

It was only the King who disliked the Salty, for he enjoyed too much attention that belonged to him. He stood with his guards aside, listening to the story like everyone else, afraid to arrest the kidnapper of his men now that he was in the spotlight.

“If all you say is true, how come you’re the only one to return?” he asked loudly when the story ended so that everyone could hear him.

“Because the Ocean is so great that only a few in it ever get to heaven, and of those that do, most rain into other lakes and rivers all around the world. For there are myriads of kingdoms out there just like yours, Your Highness.”

“If what you say is true,” continued the King, “you won’t mind sleeping near the Dam tonight, will you?”

This question was very shrewd; whatever this stranger answered, he was sure to lose his power. If he were telling the truth and chose to comply, he would be swept away overnight, never to return, and if he refused, he would be revealed as a liar. Either way, the King would be the sole ruler of the Lake once again.

Ruler of chaos, but ruler all the same.

Yet he was wrong. The Salty complied, was sucked away at night, and indeed never returned to the Lake in his lifetime. However, now that his story was known, everyone who had been sucked away was intent on returning and therefore spent their time in the Ocean at the surface. Although most of them rained elsewhere, a few returned to the Lake to corroborate Salty’s story.

That’s how the Lakers have overcome their fear of Death, and the Lake life has regained the prosperity of its glory days.