Run.

With wild eyes, a boy stumbled onto the open banks of an unnamed river. His body was stooped low to the sand. His tread was that of a startled doe. Scratched and bloody, his little frame shook under his deerskin pelt. Run! He was so close to the gushing waves, the sandbank was right before him. All around, the footsteps of his pursuers rattled the forest. A distant whoop from behind was met with a yelp from across the rushing waters. Across the water was the firelight of his clan. Here? He was an intruder, an alien. A streak of wind rushed past his ear — an arrow. The water beckoned at his feet. Another arrow. A whistle, and he felt his leg convulse and gush with crimson. He whimpered and paced at the edge of the rushing ripples, dragging his wounded side. He did not know how to swim. And then he saw them emerge — the tribe across the river. They wore different pelts, muttered words he did not recognize. When he died, he realized that he was not one of them.

The last breath of the ancient boy loosened in the waters, and the valley carried it in its unrelenting roll of currents and wavelets until it reached the sea. For however many seasons, the waters traced the shores of the world. They evaporated, waited, fell as rain. Droplets landed in a wider, slower channel — a river running along the divide of Asia Minor — the marker of where Macedonia ended, and where Persia began.

The Granicus had not a single ripple and flowed so wide that the shallow waters refracted the desert light and mirrored everything on either bank. Grecian horses snorted and stamped amongst groves of silver trees, so high that they glistened in the heat. No — not trees, but sharpened hoplite spears brandished by figures of bronze and leather. No waterbird dared peek from amid their rustling reed-nests. Before the Greek cavalry, a shimmering carpet of Persian footmen stretched from the water to the distant hills. Sweat rolled from Greek helms and Persian helms, but without a single attempt from either side to wipe them away — their hands were too occupied with spear or sword or bow or rein.

The waters sensed it as they tumbled about in the currents of the river: this was no longer a primal, savage sort of violence. This was not an ambush. Those on the banks: Greek soldiers and Persian soldiers — were not clans but entire nations risen from dust. This was not a hunt — this was something new and terrible — this was war.

A sharp whistle pierced the plains and startled the river fowl into a spiraling frenzy. Before the Persians turned their attention away from the flapping birds, a stallion broke the waves of the Granicus in a feral frenzy. Alexander the Great churned the currents and led his charge. His cavalry roared up behind him, the Greek cavalry rallying across the bank and shattering the watery mirror with their iron-tipped hooves in a tidal wave. Back! Back! The Persians pulled from the banks to brace the impact but the spears had already jutted into their flanks. Men lay dead — skewered — their weapons still polished to a point. Grecian horses rose high, only to be struck down by a cascade of Persian arrows.

As Alexander fought, he saw in the face of his enemies occasional glimpses of familiarity — for he knew many of these men he killed — mercenaries from Greece, driven by riches away from their homeland. It was Greek blood he spilt, his kindred. But then what was a Greek? Did anybody belong anywhere at all?

And the Granicus river quietly watched as the promise of gold and power erased all thoughts of fellowship, almost as if all these men belonged to a squabbling band of brutes, rather than the learned citizens of two learned kingdoms.

It was a tragedy, the waters thought, as they tugged at the strewn shafts of spears and bows, at Macedonian shields and Achaemenid plates half-buried in the sand. A tragedy, that humans could hate their brethren with such sly passion when they were so similar in form.

Leaving the warm and meandering Granicus far behind, the waters wove together an unbroken tapestry, dispersing as before and falling as rain. But something was different. Something had changed yet again. The drops were struck with a chill, crystalized and bloomed as icy shards. When the deep rush of a new river met them again, nothing was soft and all became dark.

Nightfall. Funneling the fullest fury of a Siberian winter, a gale blasted across the Berezina river. Howling like a wolf in frenzied pursuit, it was ripping away soldiers’ tents, putting fires to rest, and gnawing at the handles of oil-lamps, so that fumbling fingers froze onto them in the dead of night.

Draped in the heaviest of cloaks, Napoleon Bonaparte gazed at the dotted lights across the darkness from his little central fire. He said nothing. He knew that the little shimmering specks across the dark Berezina were not stars. Before him, a tumbling flow of ice as sharp as blades encased in river water so cold it cracked wooden machinery; behind him, an ever approaching Russian battalion.

It was almost a month since his attack became a retreat. Yes, his officers had faced one of the most disastrous of offensives and survived in one piece, only to be stopped dead by a river which they thought had frozen.

Down by the Berezina bank, French bridge-builders hollered under feeble torchlight, bearing frosted wooden planks onto shelves of jutted beams in the water. Floes of ice drifted by, bobbing up and down, scraping against bare skin. Was this punishment for war?

The gushing waters sighed into the wind. They thought of the river Granicus, the Greeks and the Persians and their shining armor. Now nothing was valiant. Nothing was honorable. All was dead and cold and desperate in this night. They had arrived in a heartless era, the waters thought, an era where men had ceased to become anything but hopeless firewood — burning brightly together in the flames of conquering and subjugation.

The river saw all the loaded rifles, aimed at each other in merciless precision. The rivers heard the wails in the dark: The Berezina has lost all kindness. The Berezina is violent. The Berezina is death. From his rigid sheets, General Bonaparte wondered how many of his men would be carried away in the night. The waters wondered what made a feud so bitter and deep, and if the soldiers ever asked themselves why they even fought at all.

Helplessly, the Berezina rolled away, dragging along artillery and men and arms. In the pines, along the rocks, one river split into two. Winter went and summer slowly crept into the crevasses and roots where the water trickled by. There the waves pondered for a long time over what they saw. It seemed as though it was a human’s nature to find hate in difference, to find safety in violence. Lifting away as mist and up into the sky, the waters returned once more.

Under flickering light, the keys of a piano rolled. The candlelight put a shine in her eyes. Hands, supple and light; they graced the keys, stroked an empty tune. Rainwater pattered on the sill. The waters flushed with a little splash of joy — this was a war no longer! Did humanity finally learn to forgive? To embrace all with the promise of universal citizenship?

Somewhere outside there was a drawn-out screech of something falling, falling fast in the cover of night. She knew it was not thunder. She knew it was Andrew’s final flight.

First there was a hum. Then a shudder rattled the heavens. The woman was flung back. She tasted iron. Distant bells rang, then silence fell as swift as a stage-curtain over her ears. Someplace outside, the shrill cry of an infant was dulled by the ringing of more strikes. The rainwater was funneled away into rumbling pipelines, pumped into a deep, dark channel.

She stood in her room, her bruised body shaking. She groped in the dark until her fingers met wax. The candle was still warm.

High above, Spitfires dueled with Messerschmitt 109s. As each plane fell, it streaked the sky with a trail of flames. Wing fragments and propellers broke into the English Channel, sunk in a great splash. On the land, another round of Luftwaffe bombs hit their mark; fires bloomed all over London, lit like sullen little candles, wavering in the pouring rain.

So the waters quietly drifted away. Quietly, because they saw how peoples were set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slayed one another. Quietly, because all along no one won the last war, and no one shall win the next. Quietly, because the waters did not see difference — they listened to everything, everyone. Quietly, because there was nothing left to do.

Coo went the nestling pigeons, huddled in the nooks and the shutter-beams of windows, shadows dark and fluttering. Wind-rise, a lifting of oily wings and the flood of perfume and laughter from the avenue lapped at the edge, where the last limestone step met asphalt. Now there were the sounds: the slash of a tyre through a puddle, of heels atop marble and the clinking of cans against a rubbish-bin. Ding! In came the train. Iron wheels braced against their rails in a gut-wrenching squeal and stopped, dead.

Down came the people, issuing from the open doors of the carriages and stepping into the lights of Melbourne City. Rivers and rivers of people walking in every direction, talking, discussing, humming a tune. Eyes of every color, dazzling under the streetlights. Teeth flashing white — laughter.

A little rain-jacket sprints out from the crowd. A bright yellow against the shuffling chaos of colors. Running, chuckling with glee at the drizzle of morning rain. Up the steps and through the laneways of Flinders Street, the little jacket hops. Splash! Two little gumboots in the middle of a great puddle on the side of a bustling street.

A pair of curious eyes peer into the depths of the waters, then a giggle. The water rippled — it was a faint smile.