The Adventures of Baby Raindrop

Note: My sixth-grader asked me for help with her assignment: writing a story about the life of a water molecule. I gave her several suggestions, and let her write her own story. After she went to sleep, I wrote my own version of the same topic, for my assignment from The Writer's Academy's short story class. I'm glad I don't have to turn it in to my daughter's teacher. Baby Drop would probably get an F in grammar!


A baby raindrop was born one April morning, among millions of brothers and sisters from the same storm. Lightning and thunder celebrated her birth, as she made her way down, down, down, and landed on a tulip.

“Where is I? It smells pretty,” she said, looking around. Seeing that most of her sisters were already seeping through the ground, she instinctively held tight to her petal.

She felt like someone was watching her. Just as she was about to be sipped by a butterfly’s trunk, Ms. Breeze intervened and pushed her off the tulip with a gentle but firm gust.

“Heeelp! I is falling!” she screamed, landing with a splat. She slid down a grass blade, and joined her ground-seeping sisters.

“Mmmm! That feels good!” she said, as a pebble gave her a backrub.

Suddenly, she saw a big, ugly mouth coming toward her. “Earthworm! Look out!” one of her sisters shouted.

The droplet made herself smaller to seep deeper, and was swished away by a herd of siblings forming a streamlet.

“Whoa! Not so fast!” she cried, colliding with her elder brother.

“Don’t worry, Sis, once we get to the lake, it will calm down.”

“Lake? I is scared of lakes. I was snapped by a turtle in my other life.”

Before she could worry herself dry, a calmness like she had never experienced before came over her.

“Is I dead? Did I evaporated so soon?”

Her brother laughed. “Welcome to Lake Sunset!” he said. “It’s my twenty-eighth time here. Best place on Earth!” He breathed deeply, and let go of his sister.

For a while, they floated side by side, greeting long-lost relatives, twirling around in playful eddies, squirting each other up into the air, dodging under lily pads.

Then all was calm. Night slowly enveloped the lake with its soothing darkness. The lake turned into a mirror where stars spent hours at a time admiring themselves.

The little droplet woke up in a sweat. She had overslept, after dreaming about snapping turtles all night. She looked around for her brother, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then she looked up and saw him floating away in his new ethereal form.

“Don’t leave me! Come back!” she sobbed. Her tears made her shrink a little. Soon enough, she felt herself lifted up by a strong ray of sun.

“Don’t worry, Kiddo!” the sunray said. “Your time has come. Noth’n to be ‘fraid of. Just stick wimme and you’ll be dandy.”

“Does I have a choice, anyways?” she mumbled. She couldn’t cling or roll away. All she could do was to let the warm sunshine carry her up, up in the cloudless sky.

A bird went right through her. “That tickles!” she said, giggling.

Just as she was starting to enjoy her new spiritual state, she began feeling heavy and damp.

“I hate, I hate, I hate condensating. Consendating. Condensinging. I can’t even not ever say it right!” she grumbled, pouting.

The sky grew stormier. Mumbling damp and heavy drops of water gathered together into a storm cloud. A northeastern wind breathed on them, making them complain even more.

“Where is you bringing us – China?” the raindrop snapped.

“Alaska!” was the wind’s answer, causing a wave of protests.

“It’s… getting… c… cold!” the droplet said. “C… can I go back to my lake?”

“Nope!” the wind answered. “I have to follow orders from above!” He turned to give a compassionate glance at the droplet, but she had disappeared.

“Hey, look at me!” she called from below. “I is a snowflake!”