Rain.
I sit on the bed or the floor next to the windows facing the backyard in my parents' room and watch the heavy rain play it's music on each hard and soft surface. A different sound for each drop's fall, and wind and clouded thunder completing Nature's grand orchestra.
I turn my head and look at the girl quietly sitting next to me. A small girl with a round face and small hands and feet, hair pulled back in a long careless ponytail. She is resting her chin in her hand as she gazes out through the window, watching the demise of the raindrops intently. She watches the little puddles form in the grass and mud, and the gunfire circles each drop makes on contact with the ground. She gazes at the silver shimmering curtain of rain and feels calm and peaceful and safe. True, the thunder blights that calm slightly, but not enough to let the restlessness that is being held at bay inside overflow out and overwhelm her. She feels safe and warm and dry at her perch inside, separated from the cold clammy wetness by a thick impenetrable sheet of glass. This is the way she likes rain; viewed from a window close up or from afar, but not close enough to touch or feel. Perhaps she fears the clamminess would go in deeper than should be allowed if even a drop made contact with her skin.
I watch the thoughts swirling through her mind and subconscious alike, and feel waves of longing and nostalgia sweeping through my soul. Rain is nostalgic, and my silent unmoving companion is making it even more so by her presence.
I wish to reach out a hand and run it gently over the top of her head but withdraw the idea as soon as it forms in my mind. I recognize the sacred halo glowing around her; intruding upon her solitude would be wrong, sinful almost. She should not be disturbed or shaken out of her reverie. Her attention is solely focused on Nature's wonders and her daydreams are filled with lazy yet hopeful romance, age-old romance repeatedly giving birth to itself since perhaps humans began to walk erect on this earth. She gives a sudden shiver, half from the cold and half from pleasure, and I wonder how different my daydreams are from this little girl. The thought makes me smile at myself.
I stop watching her and turn back to look out the window. The rain had been reduced to a light drizzle during my musings and was now just a scattering of spent water droplets tumbling off eaves and tiles and the tips of leaves at the ends of drooping branches. The sky was much lighter now and tinged with light orange and pink from the slow sunset trying to make its presence felt across the washed sky. Both of us ducked our necks slightly at the exact same moment, narrowing our eyes at what we perceived to be a dim rainbow arching across the wet landscape. We inhale together and rock backwards slightly, awed; I, with my knees pulled up towards my chin and my arms clasped around them; she, cross-legged and her chin still resting in the palm of her right hand.
We can hear our breathing since it is now so much quieter. The spell is broken now that the display outside is over and restlessness begins to settle in again as the wet static panic is beginning to permeate our minds. I recognize that the change is happening more rapidly in my mind than in her's and so I hush my mind and spend a few more quiet moments before reality sets in again, a few more moments sitting next to my ten-year old self, witnessing rain - the tears of the clouds.
