Uta Tulu

Every drop of rain that ever was, still is.

So I've gone and done it. I signed up with NaNoWriMo 2005. This is the seventh online write-off in a row, and bigger than ever.

I completely forgot about it, then wham o! It was already Nov. 2nd and I'd lost a full day of write time! I hadn't thought at all about what I was going to write about, and was momentarily stuck.

I began brainstorming, considering the big themes of my life, and started making my lists. Then, as I customarily do, asked Ge for his input. He threw a few things my way. Then, he suggested I follow a raindrop. This really intrigued me, and it resembled an idea on one of my lists. I sat with it and mulled it over. If I had a beard, I'd have been pulling on it.

I liked it.

Uta Tulu, (Rain Drop) was born in a cloud about 1.8 billion years ago during the time geologists have coined the Vendian Period.

She witnessed such things as the first ever rainbow, spent time transporting through the historic hanging gardens of Babylon, bathed the forehead of Achilles the Great, listened as Sappho serenaded her Muse.

But lately, she's been frozen. Uta Tulu no longer drips or drops. She doesn't flow or surge or coalesce. She no longer makes music with her movements. Uta Tulu is slumbering like a tiny polar bear sleeping through a winter of millennia. Five millennia to be exact.

Today, she and thousands just like her thaws out. She finds herself in a hubbub of excitement as more and more drops begin to slide against, and speak to, each other. As they grow in numbers and begin the long migration toward the Arctic Sea, they begin to exchange personal stories of adventure, comparing events and perspectives, "Where were you when?" conversations abound among the molecules of H2O.

It soon becomes apparent, the world they thawed into is vastly different than the ones they froze out of and rumours begin to make the rounds. Hints of something big to come, something not seen since those forty days and nights of the first falling.

This new world is nearing the temperatures of the last great die out. Those were terrible days. Entire bodies of water evaporated instantly, while for other's evaporation couldn't come quick enough as lakes and oceans festered with the bloated bodies of the dead. Transportation in those places was a slow and dirty business.

Well, there's an excerpt of my work in progress.
I'll post more as I go.