My good friends at Timeless Spirit magazine  have once again published a story of mine - this time it's one based on one I've done before: The Unlikely Climber (the link is to the story as published by Timeless Spirit.  It's also in the Stories section of this website).  I hope you like it:

M’kewl is a water drop who wants to do what is considered in the opinions of the denizens of the watery world to be impossible - he wants to climb mountains. As audacious as it seems to everything he talks to, he is committed to try. The Unlikely Climber (published in the May issue of Timeless Spirit) gives an overview of his quest, begins his journey, and ends with him making his way up a mountain stream towards a distant peak. But there was much to plan and sort out before heading off on his adventure...

The world of Earth’s water molecules (and they are all named Molecule) is a timeless place. Most molecules are quite content to float and sail and linger and explore, and all in good time. There is no rush to do because there isn’t a point at which one can’t do. Humans have bucket lists - things they’d like to do before they can’t do them anymore. Fish, whales, birds, and all the creatures of the earth, air, and sea have seasons and associated lists of activities. Water drops have, if they had a name for them, “pachinko lists” (pachinko is a gambling game in Japan where a little ball is shot up to the top of a machine and makes its way down through a series of pegs and eventually makes its way to the bottom and hopefully, into a “winning space”). Drops themselves are shot up into the sky through evaporation, then land wherever they rain down: a stream, a lake, sink into the ground and then get absorbed into the roots of a plant, perhaps end up in a well and be drunk by the local family maintaining it. Drops have things they’d like to see and do - they just feel no rush to do them and little interest in doing anything to make them happen.

Except for one curious little drop. His name was M’kewl and he had one item on his list: climb mountains. Unlike someone else’s list, which might contain “visit Machu Pichu”, M’kewl wouldn’t be happy getting there by more conventional means, like raining on it or being carried up by a human or an animal, perhaps staying for awhile by leaving via perspiration or urination. No, M’kewl was determined to climb a mountain. And why not start with Machu Pichu!

But then again, should Machu Pichu be the first mountain that he’d attempt? Maybe he should try for something a bit more drop friendly first then give that one a go later. So what mountain to pick?  His basic wateriness argued that there was no rush to pick...but then again, argued a part that was very un-drop-like, there kinda was. He had to factor in seasons, weather, climate, difficulty in reaching a starting point, locations of dams and lakes and the rush of rivers and streams, and and and...  It was a lot for a poor little drop to consider. M’kewl began to fret.

The drops nearby could feel M’kewl vibrating widely, listened as he continually talked to himself about this consideration, and that limitation, and watched in bewilderment as M’kewl yelled “I don’t know what to do!” Another drop who was close by and offered M’kewl some advice. “Molecule, you’re acting pretty peculiar for a drop. But if you’re aiming at doing something, perhaps you should think like people and animals do - they are good at setting goals and deadlines. Maybe you’re aiming at perfection for this first climb of yours. Sometimes perfection is sitting close at hand.”

And so it was that M’kewl decided to take stock of where he was now, which in itself was a goal. And to do it now was a deadline. To meet his goal within his deadline, he began exchanging places with other drops so he could reach the surface of...wherever he was...and see what there was to see. Each movement required timing, energy, and a bit of a plan.  He got curious stares as he passed by. At first M’kewl was embarrassed, but he quickly realized that to reach a mountain peak, he’d have to endure a lot of curious glances and annoyed glares. And perhaps more.

Eventually he reached the surface, the boundary where most water and most air remain separated (except for the drops that enjoy flying through the air as mist). He looked around and spied mountains close at hand. They weren’t huge and they weren’t famous, but they were close, they were green (meaning they were water drop friendly), and they were mountains. Spring was in the air, and in this part of the world, Spring smelled like rain. Perfection indeed was close at hand.

M’kewl began to feel for a river’s current, not to work with it, but to work against it. To go up it.  To do what Nature would never allow on her own. M’kewl began climbing a mountain.