A tiny tale that has its vague origins somewhere in a comic I read in the very early 70's, back when I was barely able to read. No droplets, no aliens, no humans.

oOo

Growler sat on the top of the howling hill and pondered the skies. The world is very small, he said, and the sky changes so much -- so often.

Growler was very smart.

We would sometimes gather beneath the howling hill and watch him be quiet and thoughtful, his muzzle pointing to the sky. Sometimes he would raise a paw and open his muzzle in awe, looking at something the rest of us couldn't see.

Show us, we would ask, show us what you see.

He would shake his head sadly and shake his pelt, nose to tail. You can't see it if you can't see it, he would say. We were always disappointed.

Every evening, just before the light faded from the sky, our food dropped onto the ground. We gave our thanks and ate heartily. The food never changed, but we didn't mind. It served us well and we never really had anything else to compare to the soft white blocks. Growler did not like them. He often said that it was wrong that our food fell down like that. We should, he argued, catch and kill our food, not just eat the white blocks and grow fat. Kill what? we asked.

Growler was strange sometimes.

The grass was always soft under our paws. It never grew and it never shrank back. The walls of the world were always a beautiful clear white. Many of us went to the walls to scrabble at it with our claws, marking our place in the world. Growler never approached the walls. He said they were wrong. There should not be walls, he announced one day, from on top of the hill. There should be open spaces, bigger than the world, with skies that were the colour of the stones in the big water, and there should be rain. Water that fell from the skies, rain, rain that poured, rain, rain, there should be rain.

Growler became frightening to us.

The rain he wanted came one day, filling the world from one wall to the other. Those that could swim did so, until they gave up and sank into the lake of rain. Growler was one of the last and when all of us had drowned in the rain that he had wanted so badly, he still remained. He paddled, holding his nose out of the water and listened, until he heard the voices of the angels speak.

You idiot, one angel said to the other. You forgot to turn the tap off when you changed the water and you flooded it. Growler listened to the voices and floated quietly. Another angel replied. It said it was sorry and it cried bitter tears. The first angel said it could see one was still alive and it saved Growler from the flood, lifting him into the hugeness that was the other place that we didn't live to see. He cowered in terror in the face of the angels that saved him and saw the world as it was -- a large walled box, where the water was already draining.

If you're ever going to raise these, you'll have to take more care, said the first angel to the second, and the second angel promised it would, begging to have the world restored. Growler watched and knew.

Growler was put back into a sterile, damp world; his moment of transcendence a flicker in time. And we arrived back on the green surface of the world: laughing, playing, watching the bland white blocks fall from the skies, for which we gave thanks and ate heartily.

We loved our world and enjoyed ourselves, running and playing, except for our friend Growler.

Growler sat on the top of the howling hill and ponder the skies. The world is very small, he would say, and the sky changes so much -- so often.

Growler was very smart.

oOo