When the Sky Fell

Do you want to know how my eyes of water were born? The ones you come from all over the world to look at yourselves in.

Sit down, because this story is old. So old that when it happened there were no people yet, and I wasn't here the way you see me now. There were animals as big as houses, and the ground shook under every step they took.

And one day the sky fell. That's not a figure of speech, children. It really fell. A stone that came from the stars, as big as a mountain, and it landed here. Right here, where you run around barefoot now.

There was a flash brighter than a thousand mornings put together. The sea stood up. And the animals as big as houses closed their eyes and never opened them again.

Now you're thinking: what a sad story, grandmother. It isn't. Because even out of what looks like the end, a beginning always comes.

Underneath, where nobody was looking, that stone broke the rock open and filled it with hollows. And in those hollows the water began to gather. It waited millions of years. Beautiful things are never in a hurry, how many times do I have to tell you.

Until the earth gave way and they opened, one by one. My eyes of water. The cenotes.

They come from a catastrophe. From a stone that looked like it brought nothing but death, and that was quietly digging out the most sacred thing on this land.

That's why you feel different when you climb out of a cenote. You're not imagining it. You touched something ancient, and ancient things always leave a mark.

Kiki knows this. She swims like a little fish and she isn't the least bit afraid of deep water. She goes in like someone coming home, because somewhere in her she feels it, even if she couldn't say it out loud: that she and that water knew each other before. Long before.

This chapter also carries the voice of the water, and what it told me: that there are two waters in love who can't touch. The sweet one, shy, in the cenote. The salt one, brave, out in the sea. They live close, and they live apart. But underground, where nobody looks, on certain days they really do meet. They brush against each other for a moment, and then each one goes home.

Love is like water. It always finds a way.