Penname: Captain Of Your Ship
Title of story: Lily
Main Character(s): Jacob, OC
Canon/AH/AU/etc: AH
"The Rain Scene" Challenge
http:/www(.)fanfiction(.)net/~teamsob
Standard disclaimer: SM owns all recognizable characters.
Lily
There was a drought in the Pacific Northwest.
It was unheard of, a weather phenomenon that shouldn't occur. Meteorologists were gathered for a convention in Seattle to discuss the situation and the media were having a field day with all the different points of view being expressed. Members of the public inclined towards green politics were blaming global warming, fundamentalist religious groups were warning direly of a disaster of biblical proportions, and Lily Rainier's family had chosen that exact time to move to Forks, Washington.
Lily's father was one of the country's foremost radiophysicists and been drafted in to lead a cloud-seeding program. That's what she told me eventually, although not at first.
I knew my friend Bella's dad was moving on out of town when Bella went to Dartmouth, over East. He was the local Chief of Police and had managed to score a transfer so he could still be near Bella. After all those years without her when she'd lived with her mother he wasn't prepared to give her up again.
So the Swan house stood empty for a few months and I kind of avoided it. But then one day in a fit of nostalgia I rode past on one of the motorbikes Bella had left with me ("I'll be back for these Jake, so you'd better take good care of 'em" she'd said) and there was a removalist's truck there.
I jumped right off the bike and went to investigate.
"Hey, hello, are you our new neighbor?" a voice asked, and the oddest girl I'd ever seen jumped down from the tree outside Bella's bedroom window, staring with undisguised inquisitiveness. Her hazel hair was a fucking mess, like she'd cut it herself with her eyes closed. She had a hundred freckles sprinkled all over her nose and cheeks, and tiger-tawny eyes the same color as her hair. She was extremely skinny with arms smaller than my wrists, and a bony face with sticking out ears.
"Ah, no, I live down the road a way. Out on the Rez, actually. You know about the Rez? I live in la Push. I was just stopping by. I knew the people who used to live here," I mumbled.
"The police guy? Yeah, we heard this was his house. I'm Lily."
"Jacob," I said, reaching out a hand. She took it with her little white freckled paw and squeezed it, to my surprise.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Nineteen," I said, impressed by the straightforwardness of her question. No shrinking flower, this one, although there was a sort of faraway dreaminess about her at the same time.
"Hey, me too. Almost. I'm kind of seventeen right now, but I have a birthday every six months, so I'll be nineteen in no time. Then I'll be older than you."
Okay, kooky. Were those paper clips in her earlobes? Surely they were paper clip earrings, which was weird enough, but no, they looked like the real thing. Wouldn't she get infections?
"So what do you do, Jacob?" Lily asked, wrinkling her nose. She was quite tall and I'm enormous, but I didn't have to crane my head right down to look at her.
"I'm an apprentice mechanic. What about you? Will you be going to school?"
"Oh, no. Probably not. I don't do anything, really. I just be, therefore I am. You know?"
"No," I said, and she smiled. Crooked teeth.
"Nobody does. It's okay. Can you show me around Forks one day?"
"If you drove through the main street you've pretty much seen this one-horse town in its entirety. If you're a fan of the great outdoors, there's a lot of it. If you're more into indoor pursuits - well, there's not much on offer. People mostly go to Port Angeles for any entertainment beyond tv and the internet."
"I can do outdoors."
She looked like she'd snap all too easily, with how skinny she was, but her handshake had been surprisingly firm so maybe she was stronger than she looked.
"Yeah, well it's hikers' paradise around here," I said, and then a voice called out from inside the house.
"Lily? Who are you talking to?" and I turned to see a woman coming out towards us - obviously Lily's mother, the resemblance was so strong.
"Mom, Jacob. Jacob, Liliana, my mother," Lily said.
Liliana was pale without the freckles, had true red hair, not like Lily's gingery brown, and was just solid enough to look like the next gust of wind wouldn't blow her over. I suddenly wondered if Lily had something wrong with her - if she was sick.
"Hello Jacob - you're a local, I take it?" Liliana smiled, speaking with a trace of an accent I couldn't recognize.
"Yes I am, I live at La Push and I'm a mechanic, if you ever need one. Hopefully you won't - it's a bit hard to manage without a car around here," I answered.
"Yes, I imagine it would be. Nice to meet you," she said, and turned to go back inside. "Lily - you've got a couple of things to be getting on with soon, remember."
"Meh," Lily said to me, looking up with those eyes that didn't quite connect. I didn't know if there was something actually wrong, or if she was just different. "I need to do my music practise. Mozart. Tra la la," she said. "Do you play any instruments?"
"No, I've never learnt," I said.
"Oh well, I can teach you. I'm a very good teacher. I'm good with kids," she said. "Seeya."
I stood there as she walked on in to Bella's house - now Lily's house. I wondered if she had Bella's old bedroom. I used to climb the tree up to Bella's room sometimes and sit with her at night, listening to cds and talking and arguing. I sighed. Those days were long gone. Now there was a strange girl there who didn't quite look me in the eye.
When I got home I went straight in to my dad, Billy, who was watching football.
"I met some new people at the Swan place," I told him.
"Yeah? I heard the guy's a scientist. What was he like?" Billy said. Charlie Swan had been his best friend for years and he missed him as deeply as I missed Bella. One good thing had come out of it though - he'd learned how to use a computer. He and Charlie were both men of few words, their friendship had involved more companionable silences than long heart-to-hearts, but they did go online and exchange messages now.
"I didn't meet him. I met a mom and a girl. Liliana and Lily," I said.
"Right," he said, engrossed in the game. Either that, or he couldn't bear to think of someone else in Charlie's house.
And so the weather went on. Huge, endless clouds were always gathered overhead but never shed their load. They held out heat, so Forks was even colder than it normally was. I could smell rain in the air, and often it was though a damp mist enveloped us all, but there were no showers, no storms, no downpours, not a drop.
I passed by Lily's one day a couple of weeks later and she invited me in.
"How's it all going, neighbor?" I asked.
"Great. I'm glad you're here. I'm cooking. Have you ever had curly bread?" she asked.
"Nope. What is it?" I responded. "If it's food, I'm in."
"Just you wait!" she grinned impishly and ran out of the kitchen, calling for her mother.
"Hello, Jake, nice of you to drop by," Liliana said, as she was towed along into the room by her effervescent daughter. "Lily wants to make curly bread. It's cooked on an open fire. I take it you can keep a supervisory eye? Lily was never a boy scout."
"Sure, we'll be fine," I said, and Lily bustled around, singing as she went, sifting flour into a bowl and adding what she insisted were mystery ingredients, although I could read the packets. Sugar, salt and baking powder.
"And now for the most elusive ingredient of all," she announced grandly, adding water. She mixed it all up into a dough and handed me a ball.
"Make a snake," she ordered.
I watched her and rolled the dough out the way she did, creating a rope of it about as thick as a finger.
She handed me a stick, an ordinary stick, declaring, "Here's one I prepared earlier! Follow my lead!"
Around the stick went the rope, forming a corkscrew. I copied. We did another one each, rolling the dough and winding it around a green stick, and then we went outside.
"Prepare the conflagration!" she exclaimed, and started collecting bits of wood amongst the debris that had fallen from the trees behind her house. We built up a campfire with kindling and bigger branches which she lit with a match, and flames soon crackled into life.
"Hold the sticks - oh, we need oven mitts, I'll run and get them," she said, and I sat until she returned and then we sat together, holding the spiralled dough above the flames.
"When it turns gold we can eat it," she said eagerly, and added, "In the meantime, do you know any campfire stories?"
"I do, but they're very scary. They need to be told in the dark," I told her and she laughed at me.
"Dark, schmark," she said. "Scary, schmary."
I didn't know anyone like her. She was self-contained, spontaneous and odd. I liked it. I liked the curly bread, too.
And after that I saw Lily at least once a week. I could never tell whether what she said was true or made up. Her mother always hovered long enough to find out what we were doing, and then left us alone. Lily played violin for me, pretending to be a screeching cat; she cooked raisin lasagne and pink mashed potatoes, she sang me sea shanties and African lullabies, and she explained what her father was doing. We were sitting in the bay window in the kitchen and she had drawn tic-tac-toe grids on her arms. We were passing a biro back and forwards to one another as we played.
"It's all very sci-fi, this weather modification stuff," she said in hushed tones. "It's about using rocket-launchers to fire canisters containing silver iodide into the sky. I don't even understand. The clouds are too cold and the water particles are frozen. It's something about making the clouds warmer so that the particles fall, creating rain. I think it's beautiful. Fancy making the clouds behave as you want them to!"
"I'm glad someone is onto this, Lily. Can your Dad conjure up thunderbolts, too?"
"Sure he can. Just call him Thor," she answered.
One day, Liliana took me aside. "You know Lily is different," she began gently.
"Yes," I answered. "She's not an average seventeen year old."
"She said that? She's not seventeen, she's twenty. That actually leads me nicely into saying that Lily has a completely unfettered imagination. She inhabits an otherworld. I take care of her in practical terms, and Lily flies. On the one hand she's very vulnerable, and on the other hand, things don't touch her. She's on medication you know, to level her out. I appreciate the interest you show in her, and your kindness. She's an unpredictable soul, but you seem to have a steadying influence," Liliana told me.
"Is Lily... sick in some way?" I asked nervously.
"No. Just special," her mother said, and I wondered what the real story was. Lily was special all right.
"You didn't tell me the truth about your age," I accused her the next weekend.
"Meh," she said. "What's truth?"
And then, a few weeks later, I was home, inside my house, when the rain started. I ran and flung the door open, gaping at the sudden silver sheets, the torrents pouring down. It wasn't a few sprinkles, it was saturating, drenching, soaking, flooding rain. In seconds I was outside and I pulled my shirt off as I went, feeling the silken drips falling on my face, my shoulders, my back. It felt like tears of relief, soft and sliding down me, saving my home and my land. It felt triumphant and liberating and I could have thrown back my head and howled like a wild animal, crying in pleasure and gratitude at the sky.
Amongst the sound of it, unexpectedly I heard a car. Billy was visiting my sisters, who didn't live with us, and he wasn't due home until tomorrow. He certainly hadn't called, so it was unlikely to be him. I stood and watched as a taxi made its way through the new mud to stop out front of my house. The passenger side door opened, and Lily came climbing awkwardly out, gangly legs like a new foal. It would have cost her a small fortune, but presumably, on her medication she couldn't drive herself.
"Jake, Jake, the rain! Isn't it beautiful?" she cried, slipping and sliding her way towards me. She was drenched in seconds, but she kept coming until she was pressed right up against me, her arms flung around my neck, and she kissed my cheek. "My dad did it - he did it! Oh, this is gorgeous!"
She moved away and started to dance, arms outstretched and head back, her ginger ponytail whiplike following her movements, her skinny white legs in an ungainly, jerky dance. She had her back to me and hopped from one foot to another, and then grabbed my hand.
"Come on, we have to celebrate - you have to dance to thank the heavens for their bestowal!" she sang, and she was so delighted it was infectious, so I danced too. Well, I jigged about like an idiot and hoped like hell no-one I knew would turn up to see me.
She lived on her nerves, Lily did, and she was a very nervy person, so the raindance lasted a while. Once we stopped, though, she stared at me. Stared like she'd never seen me before. I stared back at first, but her eyes slid and no longer held mine and her gaze was on my shoulders and chest, and still moving down. Jesus. Her mouth was open from all the laughing she'd been doing, but now her tongue came out and her lips seemed to clench it a little to pull it back in, and her eyes just kept going. She was checking me out. Lily, the spaced out, freckled, skinny kid, was giving me a long, slow once-over, and once I realized it I checked her out, too.
Funny, until today she'd been almost genderless to me. I mean, I knew she was a girl, but it hadn't meant anything. Right now, soaking wet in a white blouse that had become transparent, she had nipples. I could even see the color of them. This wasn't good. Her shirt was plastered to her, and I wouldn't have looked at all if she hadn't done it to me first, but under the deluge the shape of her breasts was obvious, her little nipples were puckered and pointing at me and I blinked furiously, shaking drops of water from my eyelashes.
"Lily, you can't be out here. We have to go inside. We have to get you out of those wet things. My sisters have clothes here, I'll get you something, come on," I mumbled, turning. She was staring like she'd never seen a guy shirtless before, and I had to put a stop to it. I'm nothing special - all the guys on the Rez look like me - we're all pretty well-built because it's an outdoor life here. We all do physical stuff like chopping wood and hunting, and we're all brown-skinned, and I guess we might look a bit different to the soft, white, town boys, but Lily was making me very uncomfortable.
I tramped through the door into the laundry at the back of the house, sneakers squelching as I did, and once inside I bent to pull them off. Then, one hand on the corner of the washing machine, I turned to look back at Lily.
Thank god I was holding onto something, because I might have staggered and fallen otherwise. As it was I think I shook slightly. She had peeled her shirt right off and was simply standing there, ponytail hanging over one shoulder with a little rivulet trickling down from it between her breasts. Her braless breasts. Her naked breasts.
"For god's sake, Lily! You can't just take your clothes off in front of a man like that!" I gasped at her, and she just shrugged, and reached for the zip of her shorts.
"You're not a man, you're Jacob," she said smoothly, seemingly unconcerned, but there was a telltale blush on her high cheekbones and I realized she knew exactly what she was doing. What I didn't know was why.
She made sure she was looking at me again as she let the shorts slip away. The remark about me not being a man had stung, despite the fact that only minutes earlier it had occurred to me that I didn't acknowledge her as a woman, and now she wanted to see how I was reacting. Well, I was reacting the way any man would under the circumstances - my cock was twitching and taking notice of the girl in front of me in nothing but a pair of panties. They were barely even panties - they were sheer and nearly the same color as her skin and her triangle of reddish curls was clearly visible. Did she wear underwear like this every day or had she planned a seduction?
Her body wasn't as emaciated as I might have expected, there was flesh on her hips and she had a tiny little rounded belly, smooth and pale, and her breasts, though small, had a curve to them that would fit my palm... in wet cut-off jeans there was nowhere for my growing cock to go comfortably and while it wasn't exactly painful it was restricted and felt like I was trying to flex my bicep with too-tight sleeves. I was going to have to leave the room to make an adjustment, and quickly, but Lily was between me and the door into the house.
While I stood there dithering, she took a step towards me.
"I take it back, what I just said," she murmured. "You are a man," and she reached for my hand and drew it towards her, placing it on her hip.
"Lily, Lily, what are you doing?" I asked her.
"Jacob, it's raining. Let's make love," she answered.
She said it as if it made perfect sense, though I failed to see any connection between the fact and the suggestion, and she took another step, which brought her body up against me. I felt her nipples on my chest and her hips press to me and she brought her arms up around my waist to hold me hard against her, and of its own volition my head dipped to take the kiss she offered. I was surprised at the way her tongue snaked across my lips into my mouth, deft and seeking, and clearly very experienced. Strange, awkward Lily had her hands dipping down to my ass and kneading me insistently, she was pulling at me so my groin was grinding into her. Where the hell had she learned to act like this?
"Do you want me to get you something dry to put on?" I asked feebly, in a last-ditch attempt to let her change her mind and stop the ravaging from me that she was so clearly inviting. I just couldn't believe it, couldn't equate this sure and lustful girl with the eternally quirky creature I'd been spending time with for weeks.
"No, I don't Jake. I want to go to your bedroom. With you. Now," she answered, and although this was completely out of the blue I wasn't going to say no, as long as she was positive. And positive she certainly was.
We went to my room. I'd hit six foot when I was fourteen and then just kept growing, and Dad had bought me a kingsize bed so that my feet wouldn't be dangling over the edge. She pushed me backwards onto it and knelt over me, pushing her still dripping hair over her shoulder and lowering herself until her whole body was on mine, a swathe of skin I felt like a rash, shoulder to knee, damp and cool, but rapidly heating. The twin star points of her nipples seared me, and her hipbones jutted against mine, her body too slight to really pin me, and I turned her. Her hands went immediately to my shorts, fighting with the button and I had to help as the fabric had become stiff with being wet. I was aroused and wanted her, but I was still shocked.
"Lily, what's this about?" I asked her and she shut me up with another kiss.
"Come on," she said, and then started chanting it, like a song. "Come on, come on, come on," as she tugged my shorts over my hips, "Come on," as she licked her fingers and took my cock in one hand, expertly stroking, finding a smooth, gliding, slippery rhythm with no fumbling or hesitation. Despite the instant pleasure her hand brought me, I was taken aback. Everything about this scenario was so completely unexpected. Her gaze was locked on where she held me, her mouth open, lips glistening, and then she looked up at me.
"Kiss me," she said, and I couldn't reach her mouth while I was supporting myself on my hands, but if I lowered myself she'd have to stop with her hand because of my weight. She made the decision for me, moving both of her arms to curve them around my neck, pulling me down, and pulling herself up at the same time to attach her lips to mine, her tongue delving. Call me stupid, but it wasn't until I was actually lying on top of her, crushing her, I began to believe we were actually doing this. God, one minute I was outside minding my own business, long-awaited and welcome rain streaming down on me, next minute I was squashing small but delectable tits with my chest, my eager, swollen cock straining between soft thighs, and feeling a wetness of a different kind altogether. Her tiny little panties were a flimsy barrier between us right now, and as if I'd somehow telegraphed my thoughts to her she took one of my hands and put it to her hip, pushing my thumb through the elastic. She wanted me to pull them off.
"Lily, are you sure you want to do this?" I asked her, and she whispered into my mouth, "I'm on the pill," which was not an answer, just a related statement. But quite honestly when you've got a naked girl writhing underneath you and she's grabbed your ass trying to pull you into her and you're both hot and steamy and wet and she's sucking on your tongue you go a bit out of your mind, and your pelvic region takes over. That's what mine did.
Pushing me onto my back she knelt over me, eyes locked to mine as she held my dick and positioned herself. Then slowly she took me in, holding her weight with her thighs, hands on my chest, nails digging in, breath rushing out as she felt me and I felt her. She was careful and lowered herself incrementally until she finally sat with her ass flush on my upper thighs. As she sat there she moved both hands to her breasts and cupped them and squeezed them.
"Fuck, Lily!" I groaned at the sight of her, and the sensation.
"Keep still," she said, and started to rock on me, with me buried in her up to the hilt. It wasn't giving me the sort of up and down friction I needed, but on the other hand I could stare at her all I liked and watch as she fondled her breasts, her eyes far off and absorbed, and her hips undulating slowly.
"You like this, Jake?' she asked me softly and I could only nod, speechless, and then she moved one hand to her mouth, moistening her fingers luxuriantly with a slow tongue before reaching down and touching herself, rubbing her clit and moving faster. I grabbed for her waist, her hips, anything, I didn't know what I was doing, I needed to thrust but she shook her head at me and said "Uh-uh," with the tiniest frown, and then things started to get intense. They started to get insane. She was moving forward into her fingers, following her own rhythm, me pushing up into her as much as I dared, almost on the verge of desperation. There were glistening droplets on her from outside, her hair still dripped and bits of fringe straggled into her eyes. Stray drops sprinkled on me giving me tiny shocks. I couldn't believe she wasn't going to let me use my hands and I was clenching my fists at my sides, wanting to get to her until I couldn't stop myself. I put my hands up and cupped her breasts. When I did it she moved her own hand, leaning forward and propping herself with one arm against the bed. It wasn't that she didn't want me touching her - she didn't want me interfering with her hips and her rhythm. Her breasts felt perfect in my fingers - I engulfed them and her hard, rosy nipples jutted into my palms and her eyes flashed at me in surprise.
Then she straightened her legs on either side of mine and pressed herself completely onto me, and we were skin to skin, all the way down our bodies. I grabbed her ass and she didn't stop me, she kept up her rocking but I was moving with her now too and she whimpered as I brought my hips up to meet her, my pubic bone pushing into hers. I still couldn't get much friction but the feel of our bodies together the way they were and the noises she was making were going to be enough to do it for me. It wasn't long before she stilled completely with her face in my neck and her heart hammering. I could feel her contractions around me as I tried to hold off long enough for her to finish, and then I made the split second decision to pull out, just in case. She'd said she was on the pill, but she'd said all sorts of things. She'd lied about her age. I took her hard by the hips and lifted her off me, letting my pulsing dick slap down onto my belly and holding her close to me again as I came, dick sandwiched between us.
"Hey, lover," she murmured afterwards in a sleepy-sounding voice, lifting her head. She gave me the most beautiful smile of sheer contentment. "You have a very exciting cock."
Fuck, I had an exciting cock, a strange, puzzling, beautiful, funny girl lying on top of me, and a big question.
"Lily, why did you do this?" I asked her, my hands stroking her from her shoulders to her ass and back as she curved into me, nuzzling my neck. I felt fantastic and high.
And then Lily brought me crashing down.
As if I hadn't spoken she said, "You know we'll have to leave now?" She started to give me butterfly kisses everywhere her mouth could reach.
"Who has to leave? Leave where?" I asked, a little too fuzzy and blissful to understand her.
"My family. We'll have to leave Forks." More tiny kisses. I kissed her too, until what she'd said finally got through.
"What? Why would you have to leave? Because of what you and I just did?" I didn't want to change our position, but I needed to see her properly. I rolled her over and leaned above her, lying on my side propped on my elbow. "Please tell me you're not serious. Please don't mess with me, Lily."
She sighed. "I'm not messing, Jacob. It has nothing to do with what we just did. My family will leave because of the rain. My Dad will be sent somewhere else now."
"Jesus Christ, Lily. Are you sure?" I sat up now, pulling her with me and lifting her across me so she sat on my lap. Her light eyes were regarding me steadily and I saw that what she was saying was true.
"Us being here was never going to be permanent," she said sadly.
"Well, do you have to go? Couldn't you stay here? Get a job? Find a house?" I asked her desperately.
"Jake, I need Liliana, she helps me. And she needs me, too. You know it. We'll go wherever Dad takes us," she said, delicately tracing lines on my chest with one bitten fingernail. I caught her hand and held it.
"So that's why you came over today? To tell me you were going?" I whispered.
"Yes. To say goodbye," she whispered back. It was the sweetest goodbye I'd ever had, certainly the most surprising, and probably the most poignant. I kissed her, and the kiss was very different to the ones we'd shared not half an hour earlier. These were soft and sorrowful.
"I should go now, really," she said at last, making no attempt to move. She was still in my lap and we were both still naked but I was feeling so upset that my body wasn't having the normal reaction to a naked girl. God - how had this all happened? She'd stared at me and I'd trembled, she'd kissed me and I'd melted, and she'd fucked me and turned me into a wreck.
"You can't go. Your clothes are still wet. You'll have to stay. They'll take weeks to dry. Probably months," I said, and she started to slip from me.
"You said I could borrow something of your sister's," she reminded me. "I'll take my stuff home as it is, and I'll leave your sister's things at the house for you to collect. We'll be going pretty soon, I guess. Couple of days."
She got off me altogether and stood up, all ghostly pale skin and freckles splattered over her like an appaloosa. I had never even imagined her naked and now here she was in all her unimagined glory, and it was the one glorious moment I was ever going to get.
"Where will you go?" I said, and she shrugged.
"Back to Colorado," she said. "That's where Dad's based. Hey, I nearly forgot! Your friends who had our house before? The police guy? His daughter's transferring to U-Dub and they're coming back. So it all works out quite well really - we're going, and they want their house back. Synchronicity, don't you think?"
Bella coming back? Christ, give me a minute for the headspin. I'd thought about her incessantly when she left, I mean, she was my best friend, but quite honestly once I was hanging out with Lily, Bella was popping into my mind less and less. I had everyday concerns, like work, to occupy me and I had general concerns, like the climate, and how the Redskins were doing. I also wondered what Lily was doing when I wasn't around, whether she was lighting fires or planning mad escapades or strangling her violin, or whatever.
I reached for her, wrapped myself around her, and she reciprocated. "I'm glad I met you, Jake. I'm off the air, I know it, and you're so real, you've made me connect for a while. Thank you," she said, tongue darting out to my chest. My heart felt inconsolable, but my dick cheered up immensely.
"Can you take me home?" she asked, and my heart and my dick both suffered a loss, and the foreshadowing of a greater loss at her words.
"Of course, Lily, sure. Regretfully, but sure," I told her, and I fetched her some clothes, we picked up the sodden wet stuff she'd discarded in the laundry, and I drove her home. Neither of us spoke on the way.
"Will you keep in touch?" I asked.
"Yeah - one day when you least expect it," she grinned, but there was no mischief in her expression. "I'll always think of you, Jake."
This really was goodbye. A few weeks, a bewildering, bemusing, bewitching girl, and the guy who hadn't realized she wasn't here to stay.
"I love you, in a mad way," she said and got out of the truck without even a kiss.
I watched her go, thinking, when it rained all the time, I thought "Fuck the rain." When it never rained, I thought "When's it gonna fuckin' rain?"
And now, I had every reason to wish the stupid precipitation program hadn't worked, that Lily's father hadn't been so clever, that he hadn't waltzed in and returned everything back to normal quite so quickly.
F**k the rain.
.
.
.
I'm not a scientist, so that cloud/rain stuff is a bit garbled. I did consult a science magazine, although I didn't understand it.