A New Kind of Alchemy

In the beginning, the ice caps melted, and the polar creatures moved further towards the poles. The growing population began to move to higher ground, like livestock fleeing a flood. Then, some time after the ice in the glaciers and the floes were gone. People, crowded together on the plateaus and hills and mountains, began to notice something peculiar. The oceans were evaporating. Somehow, in a way that science had never predicted, water was leaving the surface of the earth.