Based off the chain letter 'The Scent of Rain'. Another Szayel story.
My little brother Szayel almost died at birth. I say almost because his heart stopped beating at one point while he was in the incubator and hooked up to a bunch of tubes. He was premature, you see. When the doctors were about to file his paperwork to say that he had died, his heart started up again. It was a complete miracle. The doctors had thought it impossible, that the heart monitor had just gone down for a few moments. And it wasn't until much, much later, when Szayel and I were both seven years older, that I understood what it was.
One day, we were playing outside (well, he was playing, and I was watching him and doing an essay for school), and I looked up because it had gotten a bit darker. Small, dark clouds had gathered over the sky, obscuring the sun slightly; it looked like it was about to rain. I tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Szay-Szay, it's time to go inside now."
"Why?" he asked me.
"Because it looks like it's going to rain."
"But it might not rain. Maybe the clouds are just there and they'll go away later. Like that other time."
Szayel had a freakishly good memory. That other time was referring to the time when we were holding a birthday party for him outside and it looked like it was about to rain, so we had to move everything inside. When it turned out it wasn't going to rain, we moved everything back outside again and so wasted time and effort.
"Well," I said, sniffing the air, "it smells like it's going to rain."
"How do you know?"
"Because it smells like rain. It's the scent of rain." I didn't know how to explain it at the time. It just...was.
He sniffed the air now, too, putting down the little daisy chain he was making. And then he looked at me and shook his head.
"What?" I asked him.
"That doesn't smell like rain, Brother," he said, smiling up at me.
"What do you mean, 'doesn't smell like rain'? Of course it smells like rain! What else would it smell like?" I asked him, raising an eyebrow.
"It smells like Jesus when he held me to his chest. He only held me for a little while, though, then he said that I had to go back down so that I could be with Mommy, Daddy, and you. It smells like Jesus, Brother, when he saved me."
And yeah. Okay. So the doctors were right. Szayel's survival was impossible. Impossible, that is, without God's help. And there are some things that just can't be understood by yourself; you have to ask the Lord to help you.
"Trust in the Lord...lean not on your own understanding." Proverbs 3:5