Raindrop

• Lyssa Lai, Grade 10, Dale Christian School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

The roll of thunder was our cue to go. Like soldiers rushing to battle we began our rapid descent, racing past grey clouds from which other divisions were making their charge. As we left the blackened sky, I felt a chilling wind rush at me and knock me out of formation. I had been close to landing on a dark, rough surface which I assumed was the roof of a tall skyscraper and so it seemed that I would land very soon after leaving the sky. But now that the wind had sent all of us to the east, I saw that my final resting place would be somewhere in a luscious green park.
“A peaceful enough graveyard,” I thought to myself.
These charges were always suicide missions for us of the watery existence. We were gathered into our battalions until our ranks were full (the numbers differed according to the size of the operation), and then the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed - our battle cry and signal.
I often wondered to myself, while waiting for the ranks of my battalion to be filled, what was the purpose of our war. Why should I charge, knowing that my doom - to be smashed into pieces - was certain?
Then I saw the colours - the rich green of the trees, the lighter green of the grass, the pure white of the daisies, the intense red of the roses - and that’s when I understood.
I would die so that others could live.
Of course it seemed an awful number of deaths, far too many lives wasted. But I knew that not one of us raindrop brothers-in-arms could fulfill our mission without each other. My death alone would not make the slightest difference to the life of one of those glorious creatures called flowers. But together with a hundred of my fellow soldiers, we might just be what it takes to make one rose bloom.
And there would be some of us whose burial grounds were not so pleasant, but whose deaths were for a much grander and more meaningful purpose. Some of us would fall into those places called dams, and their deaths would give life to those strange but privileged giants called humans. I have always heard, in the roll of the thunder which was our General’s voice, that to give our lives for those human creatures was the highest calling of a raindrop.
I knew the General meant what He said. For the sake of the humans, He had sacrificed the life of His Son in the war against death.
The war against death. The war of a raindrop. My war.