The first time I saw Elise I understood immediately that this girl did not have the air of solidity that other humans have. The clear depths of her eyes were full of moonbeams like little glacial pools high on the mountainside; her feet did not walk so much as flow, and even her clothes were made of fine tissue-like fabrics that floated lightly around her. You could almost look right through her. For me, it was love at first sight.

As you know, it is not often that those such as ourselves, the pure elements, fall in love with one of the base creatures, the beasts and the human beings. They are so fixed, without the capacity to transmute, to circulate, to be in flux. How to merge oneself with them? Yes, I know it is said that all creatures, the elements, even the Earth itself, are made of crumbled star-fragments. That we are all created and given life by universal alchemy. That we are, ultimately, all the same. But they are so finite, these humans, so much destined for death, whereas I, water, am eternal, even if I am consumed, burnt, buried or imprisoned in a glass.

Elise, I believed, was different. She spoke with the voice of a small brook that tumbles down the rocks among perfumed flowers, and all my memories of childhood, the profound essences of my being, my primordiality, were awakened, stirred up, unleashed when I heard her. I wanted to leave my glass and become a fountain, a geyser, the Nile, Niagara for her. I wanted to become a swimming pool in which she could take her pleasure. I wanted to be an ocean to carry her to the ends of the world or the monsoon rains to make life always luxuriant around her.

At last, she sat down in front of me. I tried to keep my cool. I believed that when she drank me, she would feel all my power, my elemental force circulating in her body, my rivers in her veins, my waterfalls in her eyes, my oceans in her heart, and she would love me. She would drink me, I would enter her body and we would become one. She lifted the glass. I touched her lips with a passionate kiss, I flowed down her throat. I had finally reached my goal, my apotheosis.

Too late, I realised my mistake. After a little while, she got up and walked towards the bathroom. And there, she left me, and I found myself once more mingled with the waters of the earth, on their journey to the sea.

It is thus that beasts, humans concern themselves with us: without regard, without taking any account of our essentiality. They think everything is here for their use. They fill us with bitterness.

I will never fall in love again.