The Parable of the Flood

Two brothers sat and watched through their window as the rain fell down in thick sheets. This was an incredible sight for the brothers as their country was dry and their entire lives they had never seen more than a light drizzle. So, intrigued by the falling walls of water, the brothers left their home and went into the mountains to watch the rain cover their town. Now, as the brothers walked through the mountain, with droplets trickling down off leaves and over rocks, they came upon a straight where two slanted shelves captured the rain and sent it rushing down the mountain in a mighty current. The brothers were in awe at what they had found. It was as if they had gone up the mountain and entered another world full of wonders they were never able to imagine. The older brother told the younger to wait beside the new river as he climbed up a thick oak tree that arched over the water and hung at its center. Now the tree was wet and slick, and the brother had only a small nub to pull himself up, but he was able to manage up the trunk and into the branches. The older brother stood up in the branches and watched the river rush down the mountain, running and jumping in a smooth unstoppable current. The clouds parted for only a moment and the sun glinted across the patterns of the current before the gap closed again and the sun was gone. The older brother watched the water and listened to the steady rush of the river, losing himself in the rhythm of the current that swept below his feet. He stared into the water as he thought of stepping off the branch and letting himself fall in. He thought of himself falling into the river, crashing beneath the surface, and then letting the current carry him down on his back as the waters trickled over his body and the drops of rain fell and dotted his face. He could feel his feet moving to step off the branch when his younger brother called to him to come down. The younger brother stood at the base of the tree soaked through to his socks, watching his brother up in the branches. The older brother lowered himself from the branches and dug his heel into the knot on the trunk. He had a good grip on the knot, but the trunk was slick and when he let go of the branch his foot slipped and he fell sideways down the trunk and landed with a splash. He had fallen right at the edge of the river covering his front side in mud. Only his head had gone in the water and that was nothing at all considering both he and his brother were soaked. So the two left the new river they had found and ran down the mountain, through the rain.

The boys ran home and told their mother about the river they had found, and when she saw them soaked, dripping on the floor, she was horrified. She was hysterical and began to yell and cry about how they could have been killed. The older brother tried to tell his mother that it was all fine and nothing would have happened, but she just threw the newspaper from the day before in the puddle at his feet and left the room. The headline read in bold print “Man Swept Away: Found Dead”, and there was a picture of the river and the oak tree hanging over the water. The man had fallen in off the bank and drowned after being knocked unconscious. They found his body washed up at the base of the mountain with nearly every bone in his body broken, including his skull which had been crushed into mostly missing fragments.

                In a week the rains had gone and the older brother went back into the mountains alone. The oak tree still stood arching over the shelf but the river was dried up, revealing dozens of jagged boulders beneath the tree and running down the straight that had been completely covered with water the week before. The boy climbed up on one of the boulders beneath the tree and sat staring down the dry shelf until the sun went down.