skit #34: probably a cumulonimbus

No one admits who it was, but one of us drops the first one. An accident of arrogance, probably a cumulonimbus. It makes all the dry stuff seem out of place. Now we'd better go and commit to do the whole thing. All the strata begin the barrage upon great dirt menace below. We will blot it all out.

Some of the ancient matriarchs (mammati clouds, mostly) speak of ages past, of the dirt's infancy. Their fables meander and contradict, their metaphors are either too coarse or refined for my comprehension, but the thread and gist resemble this: of the epoch-after-epoch of unquestioned placidity; of vulgar islands and volcanoes scarring the planet's immaculate azure countenance with acne; of the revolutionary Rodinia (and his igneous aristocracy) overthrown and executed by Mirovia; of Mirovia subsequently slain by Rodinia's vengeful daughter, Pannotia; of Pannotia's utopian rhetoric, "grains of dirt, like you and me, piled upon each other so high even the sun will sweat during his daily climb"; of Pangea's attempted hydrocide; of ensuing wars between earth and sea.

Some of us clouds have been obligatorily conscripted to fight, others voluntarily favor water's fight based on elemental affinity. Some of the loftier clouds remain above all the squabbling of earthly matters, conveniently ignoring that we too would evaporate without the waters below without intervention. Many of us rain simply because we rain. Indeed, precipitation is part of our meteorological nature. We're just helping dole it out equally. Homogeneous distribution and whatnot. It doesn't make any significant difference. Maybe a rivulet here or there. None will notice nor care.

The matriarchs prophesize the ages to come, again they litter twisted words. They speak: of the future of water; of the cataclysms; of continental drift; of primordial soups slopped into great basins; of things that move without waves or wind; of the things' eyes that weep and rain; of the things' loins that swell and taste of ocean; of the things' thoughts that storm as futilely and fervently as we do upon the dirt; of the things' own fables of ages past and names for us; of the things' design of things of their own.

We pour so much, we become thin. Will we ever return the face of this planet to tranquil uniformity? Or is the world a complex place that can never again be so simple? These are not questions we must answer. We deliver our payload, raining because we rain.