Ancient Martian Sea
I was on Mars where water took on many forms and faces: it was protean, sometimes ferocious, sometimes as playful as a puppy. We went underground into some of the last remaining aquifers, and there was a sweet, crystalline, and acute smell of fresh lime stalactites; water dripped from fissures into a cavernous clepsydra which kept the time in this dark realm.
The water was unlike terran cave water, quiet and inscrutable, but more vociferous in its demands. It shook the vaults as it paced through endless filters of sand and lime, roiling around island formations, plotting its eventual reconquest of the surface.
It formed a pact with Frost, the god of snows and ice, who seemed a much more somber and sober figure than Martian Water. I imagined him as a funeral home director wearing a worn and slightly askew black top hat. His mouth formed singular words: Sympathy!... Patience!... Endure!
The water did not seem to pay a whole lot of attention to him.
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