Rain
The girl leans against her windowsill, shadow patterns playing across her face, dark green and leafy like the leaves outside her window pane. The air smells different tonight, stale, strange, empty. It hasn't rained in months. This is strange for her area, she's heard it on the news, on the weather reports; she's watched the lady with the yellow umbrella next door step outside every morning and peer hopefully up into the scorching, blue sky, she's seen the crazy old man who lives in a cardboard box on Tikashi avenue preaching about the end of the world to innocent passer-by's. But Chihiro just looks at the blue expanse and sighs, because for her it feels like the sky is in mourning… holding its breath for the changes to come…
Today there is something in the air, something almost tangible, something strange and expectant like waiting for a holiday, or the feeling you get on festive occasion...
She watches as clouds appear out of nowhere in a wide expanse of blue, she watches as they form swirling patterns and vortexes of grey.
Ants start to gather, scrambling around on the sun-burnt earth.
She watches as the little old lady next door comes outside with her umbrella and her cat tucked underneath one arm. Waiting.
She watches as school children stop their tumbling games against the side walk to peer expectantly and excitedly up at the sky.
She laughs to see Captain, the old homeless man, muttering blackly up into the torrid sky, his silver hair blowing in the faint wind.
There is hope, and a slight breathless sighing on the wind.
They bring back memories of a boy with liquorish-green hair and eyes the colour of new-born leaves. He's standing on a red bridge and waving to her, his eyes lit up in a smile that holds the entire universe in its depths.
She lifts her head, feeling the tell-tale wind as it sifts through her hair, the calm before the storm.
Silence.
Then suddenly the sky breaks above her, warm, wet drops pattering on her face, her skin. She laughs, holding up her arms to the sky, asking for healing, asking for renewal. Wet and resplendent she is caught up in what feels like a memory, her heart open and exposed to the sky. She is dimly aware of the old cat woman dancing around her herb garden in an old plastic poncho and over-sized gardening gloves, of Captain crooning in the wind from underneath the flap of his cardboard box and the crowd of schoolchildren splashing in puddles and lifting their faces to the rain.
She waits.
She waits as the children walk and disperse in excited chattering groups,
Still she waits until the rain is a steady, thrumming downpour that echoes the beat of her heart.
She waits as the little old lady finally goes inside with a satisfied smile and the old man passes her corner, soaked to the bone, humming a wild tune.
Still she waits…
Finally, a gush of wind, a disturbance of air, the sweet smell of the river, and he's here. Tall and strong, and perfect despite all the odds. He's standing there, just standing in her front garden, the wind in his hair. Somehow she knew he'd come, somehow she knew that this was what she was waiting for all along. She feels like she's been stranded in the middle of a dry desert for too long. But finally she has found an oasis.
She cries out, reaching for him.
"Chihiro." He speaks one soft word and the next moment she's in his arms, receiving a dozen wet kisses on her eye-lids, her cheeks, the bridge of her nose and finally her mouth. She breaks for air, clinging on to him for dear life in case he is just an illusion along with the rain that falls like light from above.
"I knew you'd come back," she whispers.
And he smiles as the sky opens above them, raining silver.