Humans are a hopeless species. They fight over the smallest of things, and in their greed and anger, they lost what was important to them.

When the sun grew closer to the Earth, they waited and wasted. They casted their plastic water bottles into the ocean, being dragged down by their destruction, the sun being closer and closer by the gravity of their sins. When the drought came, they drank like dogs, letting it flow down their chins and onto the dirt, letting it evaporate on the hot concrete of their sidewalks in their corporate paradise.

When the rivers dried up—their brothers and sisters—it was the people without power that began to worry, and it was the people with power that told them not to. Those in poverty who became more and more dehydrated by the day were told that the drought would end next week, next month… hopefully sometime next year. They were told to melt the ice in their freezers or to stock up on bottles they soon couldn’t afford.

Water became a luxury, especially the neatly packed bottled kind. I remember walking into a casual corner store in my cloak and hood, looking for something to snack on, only to see a single water bottle go for 10, 15, 20… it got higher by the week.

Walking down the streets, I saw people drinking at the puddles of the rare rainstorms like animals at the watering hole. Bent over on their hands and knees, face to the ground, a wild, depraved look in their eyes. That was, what, 5 months ago? It was pretty much the last time it rained. The sight made me more disgusted in humans than I was, so I stopped visiting.

By around last month, it became clear to those too thirsty for brains this drought was never ending, and water became scarce. If you were rich, especially in the depths of the government, you probably had your own personal stash—but if you were a regular person working your average 9-5? Well, let’s just say the ‘depraved-by-dehydration-suicides’ got a lot more common, and the normal dehydrated deaths did too. Anyone without a high paying job or a body to sell was out of luck.

Except for, well, me. This crisis never really affected me from the get-go, as a water spirit.

The sun hurts. The near-instant evaporation affects me too, don’t worry. But with a hidden waterfall for a home and a body made of floating water, I never got too thirsty, y’know? I was well off. I just had to stay away from humans, so depraved to the point they were probably willing to drink me if I ever took my cloak off in the presence of one.

You might hate me for lacking sympathy. Humans are dying left and right, hurt and affected by a capitalistic and cruel society, and here I am, with me being 6ft, 180lbs of floating water- but you have to understand this from my perspective.

Humans suck. They have always sucked.

I’ve existed since my waterfall has—that is to say, a long time. I can’t say I predate humans (if I do, I don’t remember. Do _you_ remember your baby years?) but I have seen them from their early stages. They’ve _always_ been driven by greed. Even the animals just take what they need and go, but humans? Humans take what they need, and then some, just for the novelty of it. Humans steal just for stealing. They like the rush of it when they do something nature tells them is wrong.

Even the poor, sad, run of the mill people aren’t free from sin. You ever give money to a homeless guy? Yeah, sorry, he went and bought crack.

Humans are creatures made up entirely of greed and selfishness. They get off on others’ pain, whether they’re aware of it or not. There is no good human, and even if there were, they would be the most miserable human on the planet because all they would get is stepped on.

It goes without saying that I hate humans. If I ever went without my cloak into any public space, it’d be like seagulls with a loaf of bread. No one, and I mean _no one, _wants to get their life sipped out of them by a crowd driven by desperateness. Unless you’ve got a kink for that. Yeah, humans are weird. Fuck them all.

…except for a few.

The thing about humans is that they all suck and they’re all bad, but it’s mostly because of the way they grow. Every capitalistic pig was once a baby who was told by their momma that to matter, they needed to be on top. Not to say I have sympathy for the creatures, just that I more or less understand it I guess? Like from a distance it makes total sense, but if I ever meet one, the urge to punch every single one of them in the face doesn’t go away just because they had a hard life.

I hate humans. I hate humans more than anything. But if I can teach humans to not be human, if I can strip a human of everything that makes them human… then they aren’t so bad.

That’s how I ended up having the baby around. Or, it was a baby, when the drought started. Now almost three and talking to me, only repeating the words I teach it, it’s big. It’s a bulky thing with meaty arms and chub around its face and belly, cheeks that beg for squeezing and a pair of hazel eyes that blink at me too much. It drinks the water I give it, and it never begs for more, because I taught it not to. It listens, and sometimes, it repeats. Just for fun.

A human that has never acted on greed. Is that even a human at all? Have I learned to cope with the being I hate, or have I made a whole new version of that being altogether? Those existential questions aren’t for me; I much prefer holding the human close to my liquid chest behind the waterfall, counting the seconds like any moment I might lose them and myself.

I can’t say they mean something to me. Humans don’t often live more than 100 years, usually much less than that. And I’ve been alive for many, many years. By the time I get attached, they’ll be dead in my arms. So I know not to.

But housing them is like housing an animal. A pet that comes and goes, someone you love briefly, someone that shows you that love is supposed to be brief, someone that shows you that love is kind to you first, and then cruel soon after.

I sometimes hold them between the rocks, under the light of the sun. The drought makes it warm and almost painful on my purposefully cold body, but a child like it needs warmth to stay alive. I close my eyes and let their soft coos and blurbs and bullshit ring in my ears, I let them grip at my shapeless body and drink from my skin. A child that will never know thirst, because I have chosen for them not to. A child who won’t know pain or greed or suffering because in this moment right now, I care for them, and I am their light and their sun and above all, their water. I am the one that quenches their thirst, and they are the one that quenches mine. In a metaphorical sense. Gods, where was I going with this?

Never mind. My point is, humans can suffer from their mistakes forever, as long as I have this child. It won’t be like this forever, surely, but I like where I am right now. Change comes, I’m used to that; but right now, I’m comfortable under the sun where they can get their warmth and where I can get my love.