Drip

Don't cross the Stream. That's what my mom has told me ever since I can remember.
​I live in a small house in a clearing surrounded by dark and ominous trees that never let light pass through their colossal trunks. Animals live there, though, like owls and silver foxes. My mom tells me terrible monsters live in there too, even though I've never seen one before. An electrified fence guards our house from all those wild animals.
At the front of our house, a stream moves past in a perpetual blur. I sometimes sit by it and let my thoughts flow. How can it always have so much water? What does the water do at the End of the stream? What does the End look like? I also think about how my presence seems so insignificant to it. After all, I am just another being from the bank looking at it during its everlasting pilgrimage to the End. I often wished to be a drop in the Stream. I would only have one simple goal. Get to the End. I would go in a straight line and would die there, having fulfilled my destiny.
I lived alone with my mom, and I never ventured outside the small plot of land we owned. My mom told me horrible stories about The Outside. Humans hurt each other, started wars, genocides. Humans killed for greed, for hate and sometimes for no reason at all. She told me about her parents, who went over to the neighbours to give an apple pie, but then fussed about them in the kitchen, or how politicians promised to fight tax fraud but were then found with a trillion dollars in a briefcase. She always told me "Don't cross the Stream, you don't want to be in the Outside".
But regardless of that, one day, I decided to cross the Stream.
My mom was nowhere in sight and I was getting bored of the small parcel of land I knew like the back of my hand. I was also interested in seeing what the Outside looked like, despite the stories my mom told me. I was old enough to be on my own now, anyways. I walked up to the Stream and slowly, gently put my foot in the Stream. I didn't mind my feet getting wet. As I set my foot on the wet, shallow floor of the Stream, I felt the water gushing against my ankle. It was cold, but I didn't mind it. I stayed there looking at the other side for a while, reconsidering my choice. What would happen once I was on the Outside? How would I get food, water? What would I do? What was my destiny?
I finally decided to step out of the Stream because I was getting cold. I found myself on the other side of the Stream. I was on the Outside. I decided to step away from the Stream in case my mom was looking for me and hid behind a bush. I decided to follow the stream until the End. I would have a source of water and would probably meet some human towns to get food from. I looked back once towards the small house I spent my entire life in and thought about everything I was leaving. I started walking, a tear forming in my eye, as the trees slowly covered my house forever.

As I kept walking, the surrounding nature didn't look so dark and ominous. Flowers bloomed at my feet and sparkled with the morning's dew. I didn't know these many colours existed. Birds and butterflies flew and glided through the air, hardly making a noise as they spread their wings elegantly and landed on a branch. The sun was shining and it reflected against the moving water. Every now and then I would stop to look at a flower or a bird and would wonder why my mom kept me from all this beauty.
The first town I met as I was walking was a small one. It had a small number of houses and a small general store. I walked into the store in search of food, as it was quite a long time since I left home. I picked some apples at the entrance because I didn't want somebody seeing me and telling my mother. As I headed back out the door with the apples, an alarm came off, and I jumped, because I had never heard such an awful sound before. As I heard people running behind me and yelling at me, I took off and sprinted back towards the Stream and dove into the shade of the trees. I heard more running feet and waited until I heard nothing but the chatter of the birds, the whispering of the trees and the gurgling of the Stream. I got out of the trees and headed back on my voyage.
I started wondering how longer this Stream was going to be, and what I would do after that. Would I stay at the End? Would I go back home? Would I try to integrate into human society? Would I become a normal young human? My mother often told me about how young humans were educated. They went into big buildings where older humans would talk about something and they would be told how smart they are by a number on a piece of paper. As I thought of it, it didn't sound like much fun. So I decided that I would stay at the End and spend my life there. Maybe one day, I would go home. I don't know.
Life continued on the same way for a long time. I would find a store, get some food, run out, hide in some trees, and then continue on my way. One day, though, I heard a noise that I had never heard before. It was softer than thunder, but louder than the murmur of the Stream. Whatever it was, the trees hid it and I could tell that the Stream was going straight to it. My heart started pounding. Was I near the End? I kept calm, but was shaking as I put one foot in front of the other, waiting for the trees to unveil what they were hiding from me.
The trees finally receded. I finally saw what the great noise was. It was a big mess of water and wind that roared up and down. It breathed, it was almost alive. My heart stopped. This was the End. I could see it. The Stream was heading into there. I could see every drop of it go into that green jumble. I sat down.
I did it. I found the End.

I lay down. I looked at the sky. It was moving too, like the Stream, but it didn't seem to have a destiny, an End. It was filled with electricity and grey and was infernally moving. It hurt my head looking at it. I closed my eyes. I heard the End. It was calling me. It roared and shrieked. I lay still. I had fulfilled my destiny. I had no more purpose in life. I waited for the End to slowly take me over and claim me. Then I felt it on my feet. It slowly crept up, around me. My knees, my legs, my hands, my arms, my shoulders, my neck. My head. As it rose up, I felt it. That I was one with the End, the Stream. As I drew my last breath, I thought of my mom, what she would think when she would sense me in the Stream in front of our house. But she won't be able to reach me. She would cry, she would wonder why, without getting any answers. Except from the murmur of the Stream. As darkness rose around me, I dripped into the End.