Disclaimer: All references to characters, places etc... are the work of Cassandra Clare

It was raining…again. This week was a particularly rainy week, even for New York. The fog shrouded buildings 5 feet down, making Manhattan a mere wall of fog with the slight black outlines of buildings. For the business men walking to work, for kids going to school this was a sign of a bad day, from fate, from karma, from wherever but the dark sky of rolling clouds meant trouble.

For Clary Fray it was a painful her mother. When she was a child, her mother would take her outside in the pouring rain, letting the cool, liquid slide on her skin and in her clothes. Clary would stare in wonder at the droplets, wearing shimmering gowns as they danced to the floor.

"Paint the rain!" Her mother would whisper and they would twirl with their hands clasping imaginary brushes as their minds would imagine colors, scenes and images that only they would see.

Clary would sometimes imagine skylines and landscapes…of the sunset with the bright and cool colors mingling together to create the last breathtaking view of the day. Other times Clary would see a mere twirl of lines and shapes and colors and that made her steps wilder and uncontrollable.

They would return home, wet to the bone leaving small, damp footprints on the floor. They would sit, finally, in dry clothes and tell each other about the portraits that they've drawn. While Clary was all about landscapes, Jocelyn was about people. They were mainly complete strangers but interesting enough to always have a story, the woman in the red dress whose husband had had a mad love affair with her best friend.

Together they would create stories for the people in Jocelyn's paintings set in Clary's landscapes. Clary loved doing this, letting her art make a life for someone else; affect someone else's life, even if it was mere fiction.

Now Clary sits at the window, observing the rain as well as the people who rushed to get away from it. "Mundanes," the boy had called them. She snorted. She had finally seen how they were.

They ignored the endless possibilities of stories in the glistening droplets that decorated the pull out tarps of the stores or the wondrous art that could have been crafted by the rumbling storm clouds over head. But she, herself, Clary was unable to do anything.

Her mother was gone. Lost in a world that was until just recently, shrouded in fog to her like the city. There was no way of getting her back and she was stuck here, in a place she didn't know with people she didn't like…and didn't like her. Clary had never missed her mother so much…or painting in the rain.

Every time you're sad and I'm not there, I want you to paint, sketch, sculpt; create something! Make something good, beautiful or sad and lonely if you want but bring something new into the world out of your emotions, bring something that can make people think, that can make people better.

She would show them. She would show them all of the possibilities, even if they couldn't see it for themselves. So with a firm resolve and a raincoat, Clary Fray went out on this rainy day and started painting the rain for her mother, for herself…for all of us.