The
Adventures of Happy, The Raindrop
© by Yianni Palos
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce “The Adventures
of Happy, The Raindrop”
or portions thereof in any form without the prior written permission of
the author.
A small raindrop happily lived in the big ocean among his millions and
billions of newly formed brothers and sisters. They all shared the
ocean with their older fellow raindrops. At first glance, they all
looked alike. If he took his time studying them closely, though, he
could see that each raindrop – newly formed or not – looked different
from any other.
This small raindrop went from where he was to some other place, he
bobbed up and down on top of waves or dove down looking at fishes. He
played with them, touched their scales as they passed by. He was a very
happy raindrop. Because of that, he was known as Happy.
One sunny day, Happy was riding on small, rippling waves when an older
raindrop squeezed himself next to him.
“Hello, Happy,” he said, smiling excitedly. “Are you ready for the best
adventure of your life?”
“But I am having so much fun riding on the top of these small waves,”
Happy said, and smiled right back at the older raindrop.
“Oh, Happy,” said the older raindrop knowingly . “You have so much to
learn. If you think that you are happy riding on top of waves or
plunging down into the ocean, wait until you have your first flying
experience, or turn yourself to a solid form.”
“Solid?” asked Happy. “You mean like those stones down under the ocean
and the smooth, shiny pebbles on the seashore?”
“Sorta,” smiled the older raindrop. “But not really. Not as solid as a
pebble or a stone, but solid enough to call it solid.”
“I don’t like it,” Happy said, and he instantly knew that the smile on
his happy face was gone for good. “Tell me this,” he said, in a somber
tone. “Tell me about flying. How can I fly? I am not a bird and I have
no wings. You see?” he said, and took a full turn around himself so the
older raindrop could see that he, Happy, had neither wings attached to
him, nor he was a bird which could fly.
Right then and there, the hot rays of the sun landed on Happy. “Look at
me,” he moaned, feeling frustrated and nervous. “I am melting!” he
cried.
“No, you are not,” said the older raindrop. “You are evaporating. You
are turning to mist. You see, you have to go to Alaska, turn yourself
to ice, then travel southward where the warmer water and the rays of
the sun will melt your solid body back into its original form. Water.
Many, many raindrops like you and me, make this liquid known as water.
We are everywhere. We are on top of the ground and under it and in the
air. We are in lakes, rolling down ravines and rivers, where water
travels back here into the ocean. Our Mother.”
“Okay,” said Happy, a bit less frightened. “If I am not melting, then
please, please tell me what is going on? Why do I suddenly feel so
light?” he asked, as though whispering. “I am floating, and I feel so
thin. I don’t know what is happening to me. Please tell me,” he begged.
But he did not receive an answer.
Happy found himself floating above the Ocean like a fine vapor. “I am
mist,” he said to himself, as he flew higher and higher. Then he looked
around. He saw thousands – No! – millions and billions of his
fellow raindrops, hardly visible, rising up and up. He was surrounded
by all those raindrops that had vaporized to mist. Happy looked down.
He was mighty surprised to see, for the first time, how big the
big Ocean was. He waved his hand at his liquid friends, his Ocean
Mother, and said to them, “One of these days, I hope and wish, I will
come back to you. I promise I will.”
Then as Happy’s body turned to a finer mist, expanded, and became
invisible, he heard the familiar whisper of his friend, the older
raindrop, telling him, “Hey, Happy. How do you like flying? Isn’t this
fun?”
“I don’t know,” said Happy. “I feel so strange. So thin. So very light.
Parts of me are here. Some there. Some over there, and everywhere.”
“Don’t worry, Happy,” said the older raindrop. “This is how it happens
all the time. We will turn again, go through more stages as we change
form, until we finally become a raindrop again.”
“Turn again?”
All this changing and turning himself into something new each time was
something Happy knew nothing about. It was too much for him. He heaved
a long sigh. Then he thought, “Oh, well, I might as well enjoy the ride
while I can.” He forced a shy smile, and said to his friend, “Do you
have a name?”
“Yes,” said the older raindrop. “Stagona. Stagona is my name.”
“Stagona,” said Happy, with the thinnest smile he could muster from his
so, so thin self. “I like you. You are a good friend. What do we do
now?”
“We just fly, look down, and enjoy the beautiful scenery. We are just
two lucky raindrops out of so many who will never have the opportunity
to fly. The rays of the sun granted us a gift.” Stagona stopped talking
for a while, as he eyed the Earth down below.
So Happy did the same thing. He was amazed by the size of the Earth. It
was big; bigger than big. And it was so blue. And so green. And it held
so much water. Two-thirds of the Earth was covered with water. He could
not even start to imagine how many raindrops like him and Stagona had
come together to form the sea, the lakes, the rivers, the clouds, and
so many other things that Happy could not even begin to guess.
“Do you like what you see, Happy?” said Stagona.
“Yes, my friend,” said Happy. “Everywhere I look I see raindrops that
came together and formed lakes and rivers and oceans. I am very proud
to be a raindrop.”
His friend, Stagona, looked at him, smiled, and laughed and laughed.
When finally his bellowing laughter calmed down a bit, he said, “Oh, my
friend, Happy. Do you see the tall mountains, the rocks, the trees, the
animals, the birds, the fishes, the humans, and all the other creatures
and things that made Earth their home? There would be nothing without
us raindrops. Nothing!”
“Not even Earth?” whispered Happy.
“No! Not even Earth would be Earth. Without us to give her moisture, to
quench her thirst, she would be nothing more than dust. A dead planet.”
“Do we raindrops, I mean, do we die? I saw a dead fish once, and I did
not like it at all.”
“Not to worry, my friend,” said Stagona. “We may change to many
different forms and shapes or might be even trapped for a long time
when we turn to ice. But, Happy, we don’t die. We live forever and
ever.”
“Were you ever trapped?” asked Happy.
Stagona let out a long sigh. “Only once,” he said in a low tone of
voice. “It happened long time ago.”
“Can you tell me?”
“Sure,” said Stagona. “There I was, plunging down toward the big
ocean, when this powerful, chilling wind came down on me and pushed me
off course. I looked down and saw the horror. My hands and feet turned
numb. All I could see was ice. Mountains and mountains of frozen water:
ice. Then as I fell on this big, white mountain, I, too, turned to ice
and became part of it, forever trapped in its icy hands. I tried to
move. I tried to talk. But I couldn’t. Even my voice was frozen. I am
trapped. Trapped forever, I thought.
“Then, after years and centuries, I heard this tremendous sound.
“Cra-aaack! Crackling, crackling, crackling . . .” Then I heard it
again. “Cra-aaack!” Right then, part of the icy mountain separated from
the rest and, for the first time, I felt a bobbing up and down motion.
Then the scenery changed. The icy landscape turned to green. “Trees!” I
shouted. “Soon, I will be free.” Soon enough, thanks to favorite winds
and the currents of the sea, and after days and days of floating
southward, I felt the hot rays of the sun touching my prison, melting
it drop by drop, and then . . .”
“What? What?” Happy could not hold back his wonder.
“Then,” Stagona said, “I started putting myself together. When I had
collected all my 100 billion-billion Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules to a
single drop, I jumped down on the big ocean singing with joy.”
By this time, Happy and Stagona had climbed higher and higher above the
Earth. Happy noticed that the higher they reached, the colder he felt.
Then he saw his scattered Hydrogen and Oxygen parts hurriedly clinging
together. Happy was surprised that he was not frightened anymore. In
fact, he was calm and happy. After all, his friend, Stagona, was there
to help him if he needed it. Stagona was a wise raindrop. Happy was
lucky to have her as a friend.
Happy looked at Stagona. “Stagona, my friend,” he said. “What is
happening to us now? Are we turning back to raindrops?”
“No, Happy. We are not. Not yet,” was Stagona’s answer. She waved her
hand. “Look around you. What do you see?” he asked.
Happy looked around, and looked some more. They were everywhere. Above
him. Below him. Around him. He was surrounded with cotton-like, puffy
clouds sailing in the big sky. They traveled like sailboats, all white
and soft looking for some time until the cold wind embraced them in its
chilling arms. The white clouds turned to light gray, to gray, then to
black. Each time, Happy noticed that his scattered body-parts drew
closer and closer. Something unknown to Happy, a tremendous force, was
pulling the heavy clouds toward Earth. That something was pulling him,
too.
Then Happy saw and heard things filled him with awe and fear. He
watched this big, dark cloud cruising toward the cloud he was part of.
Suddenly, the other cloud move violently and crushed on the cloud he
was on. Happy saw a brilliant light, a blinding light that the powerful
collision had created. The next instant, the lightning touched the
Earth. Then came the sound, a terrific sound. Booooooom! Boooom, booom
booom, boom,” it echoed for a long time. He saw a billowing body of
smoke rise up and up. Red flames were eating the toppled-down trees.
The greedy fire spread from tree to tree devouring the forest and
everything else in its fiery path.
“Poor trees. Poor underbrush and grass and animals,” Happy said to
himself, “They will burn to ashes.”
Full of concern, he turned around and faced his friend, Stagona.
“Listen,” he said, pointing toward the burning forest. “We have to do
something. We have to stop the fire from burning down the forest and .
. . and everything else.”
“We will,” said his wise friend. “We are the ones who created the
spark, the lightning, the thunderbolts, the thunder. We will be the
ones to turn off the fire.”
As he listened to the words of his friend, something stirred in him,
rose up to his chest, reached his mind, and tickled his sleeping
memory. The next instant, Happy knew all about lightning and thunder
and fire and how he and the other raindrops would stop the fire from
destroying the forest. It was so simple, so clear. It just came to him
like a gift. He could see now the two heavy clouds colliding into each
other and creating lightning filled with bolts of electricity. It cut
trees like twigs and burned them to ashes with its flames. Happy
knew that the terrific sound, the thunder, was the aftereffect of
the violent collision of the two heavy clouds. He also knew that when
the clouds turned to raindrops again, they would fall on the fire and
turn it off for good.
His memory took him back in time, way back to when the Earth did not
look anything like Earth. When Earth had been covered from end to end
with nothing more than gasses floating aimlessly over the undeveloped
land. There, Happy saw two of these floating gasses as they approached
each other. The closer they came, the faster they went. In that
instant, Happy saw a spark of light. The spark increased and turned to
a giant lightning that split the sky in two and touched the two passing
clouds of gas. The gasses stopped and looked at each other. And then it
happened.
“I am Hydrogen,” said Hydrogen. “I am so attracted to you.”
“I am Oxygen,” said the other gas. “ I am also attracted to you.”
“We are twice as many as you,” said a Hydrogen molecule. “How could we
work out the numbers so all of us, Hydrogen and Oxygen, become one and
live happily ever after?”
Oxygen thought for a short while, then said in a joyous tone of voice,
“How about if two of you join one of us?”
“That’s what I was thinking, too,” said Hydrogen.
Cheering with joy, one molecule of Oxygen embraced two molecules of
Hydrogen, and instantly they created water.
“Hey, Happy,” Stagona said. “What’s going on? Why do you have that big
grin on your face?”
“Because I had the most amazing vision. I now know that we raindrops
are the children of attraction.”
“Yes,” Stagona agreed. “Yes, we are the children of two important
forces. And because of that, we share our life giving force with trees,
and grass and birds and animals and fishes, and those two-legged humans
who think of us as one of the simplest elements. They don’t even
realize when they say such a thing that ninety eight percent of what
they are is water.”
“And the rest?”
“Nothing but dust.”
“Let them think so, then,” said Happy. “We know better, right?”
“Right you are, my friend. Are you ready to fly back to Earth? I think
we are just about heavy enough to fall down. Gravity is pulling us down
to Earth, down where we belong.”
“I can’t wait to return to our Mother Ocean,” said Happy.
Going down, he thought. Earth’s gravity was pulling him homeward. Could
they, he and Stagona, travel down to Earth as a single raindrop? He
thought about it for a minute or two. If the big Ocean was made of
water, then there has to be many raindrops bonded together to make the
Ocean. So, Happy concluded, if that were true then he and Stagona could
form a bigger raindrop and trek toward Earth as one.
“Sure,” Stagona said, when Happy told him his idea. “I would like that
very much.”
Holding hands, they started their downward fall as a single drop. Soon
enough they, and millions and billions of other raindrops rained down
and down. Happy was very happy to be a raindrop again.
Happy had a strange feeling as he stared at the immense blue sea. It
seemed as though he was not the one going down to meet Mother Ocean,
but that Mother Ocean was coming up and up to welcome him home and to
embrace him.
He smiled.