The Water Drop's Quest

Chapter 2

The day I found myself broken free of the currents tight grasp may have been the most surprising day of my life. I was flowing my way along another low level sand bar, saying my hellos to all the sand grains as they tried to be like me and flow up into the current too. The dim light of the morning sun shown through the crystal-clear water and cast and almost eerie, reddish glow on the ocean flour. I considered how strange and unusual the color was but decided it had to of meant know harm and perhaps was even an omen for a good day. I continued with my flow and for the billionth of trillionth time gave a soft laugh at the sand grains that tried so hard to flow up into the current with me. I know all these times I should not laugh at the poor little things, for it was part of their cycle to try and break from the ground.

Their cycle was called "Weathering and Erosion." A sand grain told me how it worked and it sort of goes like this: A rock is striped of its particles, aka the sand grains, by some sort of natural force (this is the weathering part). These particles travel down some source of water, like my kind. They fallow until they encounter more particles, which they try to carry along with them (this is the erosion part). They carry all their friends along with them, growing and growing in amount until they reach an ocean or pond, where they either sit and wait to become a rock for weathering and erosion, or they try to pick up on a current to be carried away on another trip of erosion. What confuses me is how they can stand such a long process. The water cycle, I hear, is quick and only takes a few days per step, but as a sand grain it takes weeks to months to decades for each of their steps to happen. But that is how it works, I guess, and they have to live with it. Maybe they like experiencing such long duration events, maybe they like having longer time to feel it.

But back to the water cycle. I followed my current for a little while longer, as the Sun rose and the red tint faded from the sky. My day was rather normal up to that point, because most everything happened just as it always does, all except the sunrise. So, just as I was rounding the corner of an old sea rock that randomly stuck out of the ground, at the most unexpected moment, my life changed for good....