The Rain(First draft part 1)

  The rain never bothered Angela. She had spent her whole life living next to windows, especially during the rain. The way they pittered and pattered against the glossy surface of the glass always comforted her. Wren, her dog, would always try to find the center point of her family’s old apartment to find some kind of shelter. Her younger brother would barely acknowledge it, preferring to be off doing some kind of studying or gaming. Her mom would’ve probably said something like “Why are you wasting time looking out the window! There is a lot to do around the house you know?”

The thought made her smile as she sat at her desk. It also brought up a feeling of melancholy. The current storm she was facing quickly darkened her surroundings as dark, wispy clouds began to float in. Surely they would bring lightning with them and that gave Angela some pause. With some urgency, she began to draw her curtains. Before they could fully close she gave one last look at the rain, trying to find some comfort in the individual droplets before shutting herself off from the world. She wondered how the rain felt about it. She was attached to one aspect of it so deeply, yet would retreat away when it brought its loud and bright companion.

She remembered a conversation with her dad when she was young.

“Why is it so loud?” She would ask.

“It’s because the sky is angry.” Her dad, with a warm smile, would answer.

The two were currently in her bedroom, the lightning was giving her nightmares. If she even was able to go back to sleep that night, it wouldn’t be without her father by her side.

“What is it angry about?”

“Oh, a lot of things… What makes you angry?”

“When mom makes me eat vegetables.”

Her dad laughed hard at that, Angela smiled and began to laugh with him. They enjoyed the moment until a crack of thunder and lightning sent Angela back under her covers.

“Is the sky angry at me not eating vegetables!?” She quickly asked.

“I can promise you it isn’t”

“How? You don’t talk to the sky?”

“Don’t I?” He gave a mischievous smile and stood up. 

He walked over to the window. The same window that Angela had been too afraid to look at all night. He whispered something to the skies and closed the curtains. The moonlight coming into the room was flushed away and the only thing giving vision in the room was her small nightlight. 

“Isn’t that better?” Her dad sat back down near the bed, clearly proud of himself, “I told the rain to be quieter and… it is.”

Angela eyes widened in amazement, “Wooooow that was so cool!”

She started to get up and go towards the window, but was quickly stopped by her dad.

“Oh you don’t want to do that, I told them to be quiet and they asked for you to not try to talk to them.”

“But why! I want to thank them for listening!”

“Because then they’ll want to talk to you and that might bring the noise back.”

“Oh… I’ll be sure to thank them in the morning then!”

“Make sure you do that, the sky is always listening. Now go get some sleep, you have school in the morning.”

The two exchanged a quick hug and it was the best night of sleep of her life at that point.

Ever since then, the lightning bothered Angela less, but she still didn’t like to see it. She wished that she still believed her dad’s silly little lie today. It should’ve been obvious back then, the sky isn’t truly capable of understanding what is being said to it. He just closed the curtains and twisted the story so that she wouldn’t reopen them. It did help admittedly. She just wished she could ask her dad how he was so creative in that moment.

Despite knowing it wasn’t true, Angela found that the rain perhaps did care for her. It had been there for many of the important moments of her life. Her first piano recital was beset by wild rainfall. When she rode her bike into a ditch, she was stuck with nothing but the rain to keep her company until someone found her. Her high school graduation barely survived the downpour. Orientation day of college was a drenched mess. Her first kiss was straight out of a romantic movie: in the rain under a lamp post. Most importantly, it was there the day of her father’s funeral.

Angela’s father died during her sophomore year of college. She found out right after she learned she had aced her chemistry final. But it wasn’t until later when she learned that her dad died almost a week earlier, but her mom wanted to make sure she could focus on studying. She never truly forgave her mother for that. She did everything she could, scraped together as much cash as possible and moved out of the house the second she could. Angela and her mother had a lot of fights during that time period. A lot of it ended with her in her room, eyes full of tears, staring at the rain. The individual droplets doing down the window mimicked the tear drops going down her face. It was as if the sky saw her pain and cried with her. There was never any lightning and Angela almost wanted it to be there. As if knowing the sky was angry at something could help justify her own. Fortunately, she was still given an official invite to the funeral. Her mom told her that despite the past, she did understand how much she cared about him. 

The sky that day was matching the mood of the ceremony. It’s as if the dark clouds were dressing themselves in black to match the procession. The rain began the second the coffin was moved outside. Angela looked up and gave the sky a knowing look. She silently thanked the rain for being there. She was the only one without an umbrella during the lowering. She found comfort in the rain landing against her. Like an old friend who was doing what it could to console her. No tears of hers were shed in that moment, the rain was enough. She silently admired how the drops seemed to envelope the coffin as it was descended. Like the rain was carrying it down with the group involved. She never quite understood it fully, but she wanted to believe that the conversation her dad had many years ago gave him a special relationship with the rain. It was one of his closest friends and had come to be a part of the closing chapter of his life. 

Recalling the memory had Angela beginning to weep. She tried to focus on the dampened noise of the rain outside for comfort. It made her happy, knowing that it was still out there for her. She knew that eventually the thunder and lightning would fall away and the post rain world would look more welcoming than the way it was before…

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Hey there! If you’re reading this then thanks for making it this far! Before you ask, no this is not the finished product. In fact this is merely the start of the first draft. I just hit a bit of a wall and I’m gonna revisit this piece at some point. I wrote this while I was sitting at my desk during a rainstorm so the inspiration is pretty obvious. It’s a bit of relating my own personal experiences with rain as well as trying to really make something that punches a little hard emotionally, but in a subtle-ish way. I kinda struggle with writing stuff like this so if you find yourself having any suggestions, critiques, or comments that would be so valuable to making this piece something that is more than a step above hot garbage! Writing is an iterative process so putting something down like this now is just the start of it. So to end it off properly. Thanks for reading and I will be back tomorrow!