Flash Fiction
The black and white rain drizzled noisily in an ever-increasing downpour. The sky was overcast with pitch black clouds, their outlines impossible to distinguish or differentiate. The rain fell from a dark abyss, the drops forming out of nothing and simply materializing into one’s vision.
From that dark abyss, they fell chaotically, racing downwards as if they couldn’t wait to shatter against the ground. The raindrops were all separate, individual entities making up the enormous rain, but it was impossible to locate or to follow any single drop in the torrent.
They all faded into one giant blur. A blur that was soothing to look at, but impossible to focus upon. Individual raindrops were lost among the thousands, and the thousands among the millions. It was impossible to trace their paths, or guess their end, or even remember their journeys after they were gone.
In time, they were all gone. Gone into the streets, the sidewalks, and the colorless puddles that rippled softly at their touch. They fell from incredible heights just to shatter and disappear into the vacant, lifeless cracks of the sidewalks. Their end just as undistinguishable and commonplace as their fall.
But not all met their fate this way. For all the million raindrops that hurtled downwards, there was one that rose up. These unusual drops materialized out of the nothingness in the sidewalks and in the gutters and in the puddles, and shot upwards in a slanted path towards the black abyss from which all others fell.
Since they opposed gravity rather than succumbing to it, they did not become droopy like the others, but were more rounded. And because they opposed such a great force, their passage was curved and filled with jerks and hindrances. From afar, they appeared to be miraculous balls of water that, somehow, flew almost effortlessly, but up close, their journey was a lot more perilous.
Their passage was marked by the sparkles. For in their journey upwards, they came across the drops downwards bound, and shattered them prematurely into little, sparkling splashes. Unintentionally, of course, but their natures were so widely different that it could hardly be avoided.
Then they too entered the dark abyss, just in the sky rather than in the ground. Leaving behind them a temporary trail of sparkles that fell like wet dust to the ground, and a sight to remember.
They truly were an incredible sight. Smooth, lustrous balls of water issuing from the ground and hurtling upwards at unimaginable speed; their motion bizarre and elegant. Such a great contrast to the blur of the falling rain that they were almost impossible to miss.
They were one-in-a-million, but one-in-a-million among billions. If the view was wide enough, they too faded into a pattern. Though they stayed in the memory a little longer than their lifespans, and left clear signs of their existence behind, even they would not be remembered long, let alone forever.
Did it really matter? In the end, they all ended up in the nothingness from which they were born. What difference did it make if that nothingness was in the sky or in the ground? The only difference was that in their journey, some were able to distinguish themselves, while most were not.