aech to oh!

Water is so smooth, so soft, elemental and pure, cool, calming, and yet it patiently moves mountains.
Mist and flakes settle on leaves and pine needles with such delicate poise, whispers are hushed as snow piles in drifts, blows into canyons and buries the world. It is the slowest, most comfortable death, sinking into white softness, the world slowing down. The only proper light is a burning flame, a candle, or the distant stars. A moon is the perfect beam of white to reflect the world of white, and the world is simple, and binary, and cold. The stinging air is perfect, it's like birth.
And then it all gets ruined.
And at first slowly and then with greater speed, the snow shrugs and bows and mumbles and commiserates. It's stark whiteness disappears and of a sudden it is clear droplets of water, too heavy for their comfort, and eager to go downhill.
Little trickles hide in scree piles, but nourish alcove lilies and columbines. Shale slides apart and lets the water nibble a bit of a cut. Faucets are turned on, all over the mountain, and the jets shout with joy. They grab hands and three-legged race down the hillsides, falling and laughing into box canyons, beaver ponds, trout lakes and fern-laden bogs. And pausing, sprinting, tossing rocks, all together they roar in the night.
And Sandstone doesn't stand a chance. Limestone can't cope. Schist, twisted and horrified in Mordor, flexes its shiny face but crumbles and falls. And Crystals fall. And Harps Fall. And Lava Falls. As if it were a schemer, it waits in calm pools before it slacks into a rock-toothed chasm. As if it were joking, it twirls against traffic at rush hour, giggling behind a big rock. For fun, the adrenaline junkie base jumps off any submerged rock, and trampolining off the bottom comes back to recirculate and whitewater cartwheel.
And as the river plays this game, it calls all its friends, and they all come running from all sides, and high-fives and handshakes make unbreakable bonds, and alliances are forged, and pretty soon.... "!El Pueblo, Unido, Jamas Sera Vencido!"... the march turns from the rollicking festival into a million-man-manifesto, a slow parade that mocks time, leans the weight of elephants into the wind, and fills the banks. And slowly, slowly, fatalistically, the march leans. Leans.