The Water That Falls From The Sky

On some days the sky turns the colour of stone, and water starts to fall out of it, in very many very small pieces. The small word for this is one this book is not allowed to use. But you know it. You have felt it on your head and your hands, and you have heard it hit the top of your house.

Where the water was before

The water that falls from the sky was in the big waters before. The sun makes the top of the big waters hot, and some of the water goes up into the air as gas, in pieces much smaller than your eye can see. High above the ground, the air is cold, and the gas turns back into very small pieces of water. Very many of these pieces, near each other high in the air, are the white things you see in the sky. One of them looks light, like hair — but a big one holds water with the weight of a hundred thousand cars, above your head, held up by moving air. When its pieces of water grow big and heavy, the air cannot hold them up, and they fall.

The salt does not go up with the water: it is left behind in the big waters. Because of this, the water that falls from the sky is not salt water. It is water you can drink.

The long circle

After it falls, the water moves to the low ground. It makes small moving lines on the ground, and the small lines go into long moving waters, and these carry it back to the big waters. Then the sun pulls it up one more time. The same water has gone around this circle more times than you can count. The water you drank this day was in the sky before, and in the big waters before that, and inside plants and animals and other people before that. The ground we live on does not make more water: water is not made and does not end. It only goes around.

When it falls white

When the air is very cold, the falling water becomes solid as it falls. Then what falls is white, and it makes no sound, and it covers the ground like a white cloth. Children in cold countries love it: they press it into hard round pieces and hit each other with them, laughing.

Green means water

Plants drink it. Where much of it falls, the ground is green, and there is food. Where it does not fall for years, the ground is the colour of dry stone, and no thing grows there. Bread is this water, changed: the plant that bread is made from dies if the water does not fall. When it does not fall for a long time, people have no food. And when very much falls at one time, more than the ground can drink, the water goes up into the houses and takes what is inside them. People have died because it did not fall, and people have died because it fell and fell and did not stop. Each country that grows food looks up at the sky and asks.

The electricity in the sky

On some days, when very much water is falling and the air is moving hard, electricity goes between the sky and the ground: one white burning line, quicker than your eye. Then a very loud sound. The light and the sound start at the same moment, but light is much quicker than sound, and because of this the light is at your eye before the sound is at your ear. Count between them: a long count means the burning line was far from you. No count at all means one thing: go inside.

The line made from colours

When the sun's light goes through falling water, at times you see a big beautiful line in the sky, made from all the colours — red, then yellow, then green, then blue — shaped like part of a circle. You cannot go to it: move towards it, and it moves with you. It is not a thing at all. It is light, cut into its colours by a thousand thousand small pieces of falling water.

The sound on the top of the house

When it falls after the sun goes down, and you are dry and inside, in the place where you sleep, you can hear it: very many very small pieces of water, each one hitting the top of the house with its own small sound. Many people say this sound helps them sleep more than all other sounds. And when the first water falls on ground that has been dry for a long time, the air changes — your nose knows it before your ears hear a thing.

It was falling like this before there was one ear on the ground to hear it, and it will fall like this after. But this day, some of it fell on you.