3Duality
One by one, those in front of us jumped, and the crowd behind us eagerly pushed forward as they did.
That was how I found myself only centimetres from the edge of the raincloud with billions of fellow raindrops lined up beside me, making final preparations for the jump. They emitted auras of pure excitement, but some invisible bubble of gloom stopped the dangerous radiation from doing me any harm.
Too late now, smart one, I scolded myself. Earlier, I considered hiding away in the middle of the raincloud to avoid having to jump – after all, there were so many raindrops, and it was unlikely my absence would make a difference – but I dared not. Now, I did not even have a chance to do that.
I myself could not explain the strange feeling of apprehension. It was meant to be in our nature to want to make the leap, except Mother Nature might have missed me when she programmed the minds of the newborn raindrops. Or maybe it was because I actually heeded the old saying, 'look before you leap', in a situation that I was not meant to.
I looked down at the foreign world about three hundred metres below us, and images of our grand finale began registering in my mind much too early. We were all nice spherical forms by nature, but down on the ground, only flat drops of water could be seen, and it did not take a raindrop reincarnation of Einstein to guess what they were only seconds ago.
"Beautiful world, here we come!" they had cried in unison as they leapt. Personally, I thought they were just strange. We had been looking down at the ground since the day we were born, and there was never anything interesting. Some red rooftops, black roads, a great expanse of navy blue ocean to the south, lush green forests and yellow deserts. There was little beauty in that, and whatever beauty there was should have been long gone after we looked at it every day.
In fact, I could quite safely say that they inspired me to not be like them.
Behind us, the clouds near the western horizon parted slightly, and the bright sunlight raced in through the small gap in the sky. Slowly, faint colours appeared amongst the raindrops falling a distance away. I watched in awe as two great, colourful arcs formed. Never had I seen such a phenomenon before, but I knew what it was immediately.
It was meant every raindrop's dream to become part of a rainbow. With all my oddities, though, I was starting to doubt if I was actually a raindrop. Admittedly, I would love to become part of one of those arcs, except I was not sure if I was eager enough to make the leap for it. It sure was a long way down…and I was going to be part of the rainbow for what, an unmeasurably small fraction of a millisecond?
Thirty more rows of raindrops made their jumps, and I gulped as my impatient peers pushed me closer and closer to the edge. Some of those in my line saw this as their chance and took their leap early, but I struggled to retain steady footing on the cloud.
Another cloud began to release its first raindrops, reinforcing the fading rainbow. The beam of white light hit the raindrops and split into the spectrum. Graceful bows of colour arced across the sky, and turned the heads of the thousands of people on Earth.
It made me wonder why the colours of light did not just stay separate. Why form the unappealing white light when they were spectacular displays on their own?
"Look!" I had been lost in thought, but snapped back into reality when someone cried out excitedly, pointing at the distant rainbow. "It's nearly gone! Maybe it'll be our turn next."
Glad to know you're happy about it, I thought. I certainly was not.
The rainbow was fading again, and the other rainclouds had almost exhausted themselves of raindrops. Billions of them were still eagerly leaping off the cloud, hoping to become part of the rainbow before it completely disappeared, but the colours were not longer as vibrant. The secondary rainbow had almost faded away entirely.
The violet and blue bands of the rainbow also became less obvious, and it did not take me long to realise why.
A vibrant orange spread cross the sky as the sun sank a little lower. From our cloud, it was still well above the horizon, but for them, it would have started to set below it. A flood of orange light spilled over it, washing the white light away and drowning the land below in the warm hues.
Only minutes ago, it had all the colours of the rainbow scattered over its surface, but now, everything was more or less just red. As beautiful as it was, though, I could not help thinking back to the ordinary world that we saw earlier in the day. This world was missing more than half of the colours than the one I knew, and it felt like there was something missing from the scene.
I was brought back into our world by the raindrop next to me announcing, "Next fifty rows, please get ready. We'll be falling about…now."
Before I even had a chance to protest, I was pushed over the edge by the eager raindrops behind me. The sunlight fell through us, and split itself into the colours of the spectrum when it emerged again. I could not see it, but from the heads that turned in our direction, I was guessing that we were now part of the rainbow.
At this stage, I realised there was little use in protesting, but I no longer needed to. Not only had I just managed to achieve what every raindrop dreamed of achieving, but I also understood the reason behind the existence of white light.
All the colours make up white light, and all the raindrops make up the rainbow.
The glory was over soon enough, and I continued my descent down to the ground with billions of other raindrops celebrating beside me. Our end was near, but they were only happy to have been part of a rainbow.
And I guess I was too.
A/N: I said I'd fix it, except it ended up worse T_T At least the ending isn't so weird any more, although it's more vague.
Actually, suggestions on how to fix it would be great.
Ah well. Have a nice day.