Like a piper.
It pushes through a sea of its peers. They laugh and jeer as it passes, ridiculing its efforts.
But the drop doesn’t listen. The drop doesn’t look.
There is only one goal, only one way. And it leads through a cacophony of drums.
Time stretches to eternity and back. An instant passes, and suddenly, it is there.
The milky path into the maw offers itself to the drop like the softest embrace. It follows it gladly, crawling higher and higher until it stands at the edge.
“Come here, my child,” the dark pit coos. “Come and join me forever.”
The laughter of its peers turns to deathly screams.
“No! Stay with us. Do not succumb to the call of the darkness,”they shout.
But the drop doesn’t care—doesn’t listen.
The drop longs to dissolve into the nothingness, to become one with the nothingness. So it diverts from the silken path and drops into the sleepless depths below.
The darkness is not absence but, rather, abundance.
Strange winding roads. Abandoned nooks. Comforting beds.
Each and every one of them calls to the drop. Their sweet voices beckon it to join them in every crevice. It feels their pull and yields with a deep sigh.
A cave drowning in water falling into the tightest paths, sucks it further, deeper. With unimaginable speeds, it passes from limb to limb, dipping them in molten gold. Like a fire, it spreads through the branches, from leaf to leaf, jumping over distances too far to comprehend. Every crevice calls to it.
Come here, my child, come here. You are loved; you are wanted.
It follows the voices faster and faster. Each time, it loses a piece of its memory.
Disintegration is its deepest desire: to collect the love and become one with the beckoning calls.
But one is louder than the others.
Stranger than the others.
A broken song rhythmical like a stuttering heart. The drop is in awe of its size and beauty. It offers itself in relief.
Take me, darling. Remake me.
Long, thin tendrils devour it swiftly, spreading it over every surface.
Absorbing it.
The drop is no more.
All is still, for one eternity, and then another.
But then—what do I hear?
The sounds of distant waves? The rustling of leaves?
It’s greedy now, demanding more.
Insatiable.
