The Ice That Fell From Nowhere

The rocks that brought the ocean — here they are. Not one rock. Not a thousand. A hundred million years of bombardment, stone after stone after stone falling out of the dark and hitting a world that had no sea yet, only cooling crust and a sky the color of rust. Each rock carried something locked inside it: ice. Not much. A smear. A trace. The way a fist holds a little water if you squeeze snow hard enough. But the rocks kept coming, and the ice kept melting, and the water had nowhere to go but stay. Drop by drop by drop by drop, across a span of time so long that all of human history fits inside it the way a single word fits inside a library. And here is the part that should stop you cold: the water is still here. The same water. The ocean you've seen, the rain that soaked you last autumn, the water moving through your blood right now — it didn't form on Earth. It arrived. It fell. It came from somewhere else entirely, and we are still not certain exactly where. The leading suspects are a particular family of rock, dark and crumbly, older than the Sun. But there is another candidate, stranger and faster, and it has been seen before.