Water

Task was to write about water, thought I’d write about a hydrological cycle, but without using the word water. (re-edited 12/12/12)

Gentle wisps of white puff glide slowly across the sea blue horizon, morphing from wisp to spectre, vanishing then re-forming higher into a soft grey swelling form.  One gentle grey mound is unresistingly attracted to its neighbour and almost imperceptibly they stretch, glide and join,  melding into a darker grey.  This larger form begins to attract other passing grey wisps, and drawing in nearby puffs it ominously increases in size.  It darkens and becomes a broody mass gathering in all around and growing rapidly.  It has quickly become a burgeoning charcoal-dark lump and by an unseen alchemy it rises larger and dirtier, now grabbing and drawing in every spectral wisp and pillow in sight.  Its appetite is insatiable and it expands by the second becoming angry with its size.  The threatening mass is heard to moan as it lifts an enormous head heavenward in puffs and billows so high it captures and holds all warmth and light from above, trapping it within and casting a pall of gloom over the surface below.  It grumbles as the pain of the light flashes in its belly, clawing and arcing, trying to tear a way out. The churning hurricane wantonly grips the heat and light inside it’s demonic digestion .  A cataclysm grinds and builds, it groans and creaks expanding its girth to unimaginable enormity.  A victim of its own physics, demanding more growth, it rolls uncontrolled towards a smaller maelstrom, overwhelming and consuming with a deafening crash and belch.  It becomes a gargantuan agitating weight and hunkers downwards, pressing a wedge of air heavily onto the surface of the ocean.  Bleak and ominous it compresses the waves and holds this expanse of the world to task.

A solar flare slashes through the ionosphere to pock and prick at the billowing carapace.  The whirlpool churnings are tormented, the captured energy spiked and  excited can be held no more.  A massive gash of lightening rents a gaping tear, flashing destruction earthward and exploding within.  Wounded, it writhes and squirms, flayed and agonised it bleeds its viscera in a torrent to the sea. 

The ocean is pelted with jagged ice and a rain so intense it shatters the surface to a mist of impact.  The bombardment chills and shrinks the air and the leaden cloud falls closer to the surface.  Warm air from behind is sucked between sea and storm in a rush that skates the entity forward, pushing it towards land a hundred miles ahead.  The supercharged behemoth draws more turbulence from the warmth and magnifies its deluge and lightening.

The cloud has become a demonic engine of destruction, boiling and churning faster and faster, intensifying as it perpetuates momentum.   The shoreline is scared by the approach, a wall of ocean is being pushed towards it and fire and torture can be seen in the rolling mess rumbling above a massive wave.  There is no escape, no remedy, the beach and headlands surrender to the rushing tide.  A cruel shrapnel of spiked ice and sheets of flood are poured mercilessly on the land as, forced to rise, the angered storm heartlessly sheds its load to clamber, drag and smash itself into the coastal hills and cliffs.  Smashing, tripping, dumping and avalanching down, the flood carves  up coastal fields and rips at inland forests.

Streams and gullies are drowned in the deluge and living creatures struggle to find purchase or breath.  A wall of debris is torn from the land and flung, scraped and scoured over swathes of earth never before inundated.  The drowning flow races up valleys ,filling voids and consuming the landscape with turbulent writhings.

Like a rolling ball of lightening and destruction the storm front illuminates and rips a fiery path of apocalypse, slowly purging  the tempest of it’s weight. 

Gradually, in time, its load is released, it relaxes, its fires spent, its thickness diminished and it slowly lifts higher and expands, lighter, wider  and leaving a devastated land.  A brightness seeps through the softer grey, shining the sodden lands.  A sigh of sunlight slices through the centre of the cloud and the grey dissolves.
There are more breaks, the monster dissipates, pillows and gentle wisps break off and in the blue sky they thin out and waste into a rolling calm cloudscape that beautifies the terrain.  A gleam of silver reflects clear blue sky off the surface of a new wide lake.. 
From a sheltered ledge up high on a lee-side hill a life-form emerges to scramble down the stripped earth towards this trapped expanse of flood.   Reaching the lake and glancing around the creature rests on a tumbled boulder jutting from the edge.  It bends towards a clearing pool and lowers its head to drink deeply, warmed comfortingly by the sun on its back. 
To the east, gentle wisps of white puff glide slowly across the sea-blue horizon, morphing from wisp to spectre, vanishing, then re-forming …