The rainstorm was a welcome break from the midsummer heat, but as suddenly as it had come, so did it vanish, leaving a thick dampness which caught on their skin. Quickly evaporating from the earth under the brilliant sun, the fallen rain misted and rose in billowing columns, creating a surreal landscape in which the trees and bushes oscillated in and out of existence. The droplets slid off the leaves, tapping others on their way to the ground where they would meet their demise, evaporating once more into the atmosphere, coagulating and falling to the earth to repeat the cycle.
She skipped a bit too far ahead of her father, toward the spring that fed the brook that flowed down the mountain, into the river, into the ocean. Her father hid behind a tree, peeking out from behind it to spy on her, a good fifty yards ahead, and watch her reaction to his disappearance. She turned around, and when he was not there as expected, she froze, confused. In the scariest monster voice he could muster: “Yummy little girls are my faaaavvorite snack!” She giggled and ran to him, trying to push him playfully. He stepped aside, picked her up by the stomach with one arm and tickled her with the other. Her giggles and his deep, hearty laughs echoed through the mist, through the plants and trees, and deep into the ground until they faded into the earth.
He hoisted her onto his shoulders with ease and held her legs as she ducked under a branch, plucked a leaf, and dropped it. It spiraled to the ground where it would decompose and feed the insects and its parent tree.
Amadahy’s father sat on a large, flat rock by the spring and watched his little girl scoop the fresh water into her mouth. He thought how beautiful she looked, her smooth, black hair reflecting the sunlight which was now peering through the clouds and the mist, its reflection sliding up and down her locks as she moved. Her sun-darkened skin matched the color of the tree trunks and he pondered how they really were not that different from the trees. A tree’s existence was just a bit less dramatic, a bit more relaxing than his. He sat hugging one leg while the other lay outstretched, watching Amadahy with a smile, but a conflicted smile.
A lone, purple orchid overhanging the spring saw Amadahy’s reflection in the dark eyes of her father’s sad smile. It bloomed just a bit larger and brighter to try to lift his mood.
“Amadahy,” as he stretched out his arms so she would come sit in his lap. She bounded to him instantly with the energy and naively innocent eyes only a young child has. “Hi daddy,” she giggled as she jumped into his lap. “Ama, my sweet little orchid, I have to tell you something.”
As naive as she was, she was still fully human with all of the accompanying intuition. She knew in that instant what he was going to tell her, and had no way of hiding this knowledge from him. “I have to go away again, this time for two moons.” She wanted to be strong in front of him and not cry, but doing so meant she could say nothing, having to fully focus on holding back the tears. He knew what she was doing, and he felt the unwelcome pang in his heart. She stood up, still composed, then lay on her stomach to look into the spring. But when she saw how sad her reflection looked, her sadness compounded and the tears began to flow, making her reflection unrecognizable with their outward ripples.
The first tear was one of the raindrops she had welcomed into her mouth while playing in the recent rainstorm. The droplet had fallen from high up in the clouds, one of the few droplets that had become part of her. It felt her joy, it felt her confusion, it felt her sadness, and now it was no longer part of her. It was with all of the other droplets in the mountain spring. Some of them had come from the same rain cloud, others had risen from deep below the ground, having sat there for years before they were released up into the spring, into the daylight.
The drop flowed down the stream, over the smooth rocks, through some overhanging branches, down a waterfall, and into a deep pool. The sunlight shone into the pool through the trees, energizing the droplet and her neighbors from millions of miles away. She watched the little fish swim together under the waterfall, waiting to inhale disoriented insects. She enjoyed the serenity of the forest and the varied colors of the trees and flowers, filtered through the perpetually changing surface.
Finally she moved upward into the current and continued her journey down the stream, over several smaller waterfalls, through smaller pools, and onto a rock at the top of a steep waterfall that overlooked the land. Far below, the sound of the splashing water rose up the cliff. The forest leaves swayed in a synchronized dance to the salty ocean breeze, and beyond them, the ocean glistened a bright white in the middle, surrounded by a deep green transitioning to blue. If she focused she could even hear the waves rolling into the sand.
Some of her neighbors from the pool where she had spent a few days splashed up onto the rock and brought her back into the stream. They free fell together for two hundred feet into the river below, beginning their slow crawl to the ocean.
Creeping past the mud banks slowly, lazily, she drifted toward the ocean. When she finally met with the clean, salty sea water, she was swept freely through the currents under the sun, glistening on the surface, then sinking to the reef, flowing through the seagrass, rolling over the sand, happily and peacefully at the mercy of the tides.
She would enjoy several weeks in the shallows, admiring all of the life and activity, but as fate would have it, she was to experience something completely different from any of her past incarnations.
Deeper and deeper, hugging the sea floor, she continued on for several months to the edge of the abyss. In two hundred feet of water there was very little light, very little activity, just the occasional whale or squid, and some schools of tuna.
She drifted over the edge of the cliff leading to the abyss, which stretched down for miles below. It felt like a slow, endless free fall into the blackness, the depths, the unknown.
After several days there was no light at all, except for the occasional anglerfish that would creep by, luring its prey with its lighted lure. There was no sound. There was nothing but pure existence. She lost all conception of time and space, suspended in the emptiness, alone with her thoughts which started to mingle with the thoughts of the seemingly infinite water droplets around her. She didn’t know if she was having a thought or if it was something she was sensing from her neighbors. They all compressed and blended into one.
This new existence was rather enjoyable. There was absolutely no movement, nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to experience, other than her thoughts and the thoughts in the rest of the pool of consciousness. It was strange. Liberating. She reminisced about her past incarnations as trees and spiders and people, but this was much different. It was pure being.
She would spend over two thousand years in this state, in the eternal blackness of the abyss, until she was sucked into a test tube attached to an exploratory submarine. She felt the life energy of the scientists on board, and the feel of the glass and the metal and all of the sound and motion shocked her. She wasn’t sure if she was suspended in the abyss for a day or for a million years. Time had no meaning.
As she separated from the abyss, she slowly regained her sense of self, her individuality. It was as if she were waking up from a long dream that became just a fuzzy memory. She hadn’t wanted to leave, but she welcomed the change and the new experience.
When the scientists finished their tests, they discarded her and the rest of the droplets in the sink, thus beginning a somewhat gruesome journey through the plumbing where there was a lot of commotion and confusion until she drained into a canal. It was a dirty, stagnant canal and she was stuck on the surface, unable to sink the cooler depths. She felt a strange sensation of being pulled upward and she intuitively knew her time was almost up.
It was a scorching hot summer day and it took only a few seconds before the raindrop, which had enjoyed an Earth experience of over two thousand years, was no more. Her physical droplet body turned into gas and her spirit, her consciousness, was on its own again, free from the physical restraints of her earthly existence. She had a wonderful, overwhelming feeling of being home, and reflected on her last incarnation, thankful for such a great experience, full of a deep love for the planet she had just left.
She decided to experience Earth again, as it was her favorite planet in her favorite universe, and reincarnated once again as a water droplet, high in the same part of the sky her last droplet had originated. She enjoyed the familiar free fall sensation she had experienced several times before.
It turns out she landed on the earth directly above the gravesite of Amadahy, the young native girl who had welcomed her past incarnation into her mouth and body. The gravesite was not recognizable as such since it had been thousands of years since Amadahy was born and had perished, as all living things do, but the baby water droplet just knew.
This incarnation would be much shorter than her last, but it would be another wonderful Earth experience. She sank into the dirt, onto the root of a beautiful flower, and was pulled into it. As she became part of the flower, the raindrop immediately recognized it as Amadahy.
“Hello Amadahy,” said the raindrop to the flower. “I’m surprised to find you here again.”
“Hello Raindrop. I’ve spent thousands of years of existence right here as many different beings,” said Amadahy. “I love this place.”
The sun shone brightly, breaking through the clouds and warming her. She spread her petals, deepened her color, and together they reached for the sky.