Rain

by alexmagnet

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance, Original Character
Length: 5867

During rainy days, a young colt skips class to go write in the park. One morning, he happens to meet a kindred spirit. But the rainy season is almost over, and he's worried that when the rain leaves, she will too.

During rainy days, a young colt skips class to go write in the park. On one particular morning, he happens to meet a kindred spirit, though she's quite a bit older than him. But the rainy season in Canterlot is almost over, and he's worried that when the rain leaves... she will too.

Published 2014-04-15 02:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2014-04-15 02:50:02 UTC

Thunder

Rain splashed against the windows of the bus as we rolled down the street. I stared out past the streaked glass and saw a glint of sunlight through the clouds, but it was swallowed up almost immediately as a team of pegasi pushed another cumulus in to fill the gap.

It was the rainy season in Canterlot, and three or four times a week the sun would be obscured by somber gray clouds that poured soft rain across the city for sometimes six or seven hours without stopping for even a second. They did this so that they wouldn’t have to one big storm, and instead the weather team could split the rain quota into many smaller and lighter storms, though the payoff was that they lasted much longer than a normal storm. I didn’t mind though. It was during rainy days that most of my best ideas came out.

That’s why I was on the 36-B bus now instead of the A. If I had taken the bus that came five minutes after this one, I’d be well on my way to school now, but instead I did what I always do on these rain-soaked days: I went to the park.

A thud resounded dully as we passed over a pothole, jarring me out my thoughts. I glanced up to see that we were getting close to my stop now, so I scooped up my bag and slung it over my back while making my way to the front of the bus. A thickset stallion stood in front of me, and a elderly mare behind. Sandwiched between the two, I briefly considered how it is they might meet in a story.

The stallion would step off first, that’s a given, and he’d be followed by the mare. He’d stop a moment and realize he’s gotten off too early and would turn around to board the bus again only to find himself face-to-face with the mare, nearly knocking her over in his haste. He’d reach out and stop her from falling, and pull her up, offering half-sincere apologies as he watches with bitter distaste as the bus drives off. She’d apologize when she sees he’s upset, and he’d brush it off, saying, “It’s nothing,” or, “I like walking anyway.” And then she’d offer to walk with him. Suddenly, a smile would spread across his face, he’d say, “I think I’d like that,” and they’d start up a merry conversation as they disappeared into the crowd.

Just then, the bus stopped, and the driver called out, “Canterlot Botanical Gardens!”

Once again I found myself jarred out of my thoughts, pushed and jostled as several more ponies joined the group exiting the bus. As I stepped off the bus, I watched the stallion in front of me stop for the briefest of moments, and my heart stopped, but then he turned to the right and walked off. I glanced behind me to see the mare exit the bus, turn left, and vanish as several more ponies followed her.

I sighed under my breath, hitched up my bag and headed towards the entrance to the garden.

During the short walk to the gate, my clothes had been soaked through, and I got stares from multiple ponies, their eyebrows raised as they watched me pass, no umbrella to cover my head. Truth be told, I liked it that way. Feeling the rain against my skin, running down my neck as it soaked my mane, was refreshing. That being said, it was a bit of a pain since my bag always ended up dripping wet as well, and I was always worried I’d open it up to find my notebook a soggy mess.

Luckily, however, as I passed through the gate, trotted along the narrow gravel path and listened to the gentle drum of rain against the leaves, made my way past the bend, alongside the pond’s edge, and finally reached the stunted pier, which was covered by a wide roof, I reached in my bag to find my notebook was perfectly dry. I grinned. Laying the notebook against the pier, I pulled a quill out and an empty inkwell, setting them beside the notebook as I grabbed the final ingredient: fresh ink.

The rain made little ripples in the water as it fell into the pond. I watched perfectly clear water of the lake be distorted by these ripples for a few minutes before I finally unstoppered the ink and poured it into the well. Dipping my quill into the little pot, I ran through several ideas in my head.

I pulled the quill out and tapped the feather against my lips. There were so many ideas bouncing around in my head, so many stories waiting to be told. Despite that, I couldn’t help but keep falling back on one idea, one singular theme. My mind flashed back to the bus, and the stallion and the mare. Suddenly feeling smug, I placed the quill against the paper and started to scribble out a couple letters.

Amore

That was it. I was going to write a story about love, and loss, and heartbreak. I chuckled, scratching out the title and reinking the quill anew. Even I knew how cliche that would be… and yet. Something about the idea of love drew me to it. Maybe I’m more of a romantic than I thought? Regardless, how does one write about love when they’ve never experienced it?

While I pondered this rather philosophical question, I happened to catch, out of the corner of my eye, the sight of a mare approaching. She had no umbrella, like me, but her wings were stretched out over her head to shield herself from the rain as she walked. For some reason, as she rounded the corner of the pond, I found myself hoping she’d pass right by me.

I looked away from her, casting my eyes towards the pond instead. I waited in silence, pretending to be extremely interested in the pond, until I was sure she was gone. But just then, as I was about to turn back around, I saw her reflection walking along the pier, getting closer and closer to me.

She wore no clothes, and her sand-colored fur was slick with rain. Dripping water, her sunset mane hung over her face and I could just barely see the emerald green of her eyes through a gap. I slowly turned around, deciding that I couldn’t ignore her forever.

To my horror, she started to flap her wings. I quickly placed my body between the rain flying off her body and the paper still thankfully dry. When she finally stopped, I whipped back around, ready to yell at her, but as I watched her preen herself, I felt my anger dissipate.

I sighed quietly and picked up my paper and quill again. I suppose having some company wouldn’t be too bad. Placing the quill beneath where I had scratched out the last title, I tapped it against the paper in a vain attempt to force words to materialize on the page. I sighed again, then looked over the top of the page. There, sitting against one of the wooden beams opposite me, the mare was still preening herself. She tugged a feather out and spit it into the pond. As she went back to her wing, she must’ve caught me looking at her, because she stopped.

My eyes shot back down to the blank paper instantly, and I stared at it for what felt like ages. When I finally thought it was safe, I looked back up. She was still looking at me, a smile on her face.

“Hey,” she said, her head tilted slightly to the side.

“Hello,” I mumbled back, quickly looking away again.

For a time, silence returned, broken only by the sound of rain dripping from the roof and into the pond. I rested my quill against the page, but found myself unable to write anything. Then, I pictured the mare in front of me in my head, and suddenly an idea struck me. I started to write. The quill flashed across the page. Sentences flowed from it like water from a tap, and I filled several pages before I finally stopped again.

Feeling satisfied with myself, I reached for a new page, ready to keep going, but before I could start, I heard her voice again.

“You’re an engineering student, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

I looked up and she pointed to my bag. “It says ‘Canterlot University Engineering’ on it.”

I glanced at my bag. “Oh, yeah… it does.”

“So, you’re an engineering student, then?”

It seemed like it should’ve been an easy question to answer, but what came out instead of ‘yes’ was, “I hate engineering.”

She laughed, her wings fluttering slightly. “You’ve a funny way of showing it.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t a student.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be in school, then?”

“Shouldn’t you?”

Her clear laughter rung out like a bell. “I haven’t been to school in fifteen years,” she said, leaning against the beam.

“Work, then.”

She stopped laughing, and her face became stony. Her eyes drifted around, falling on the pond. She stared silently for a moment, then said, “I asked you first.”

I pursed my lips. “I'm skipping."

Her face softened. "Oh? Why is that?"

"I always skip when it rains."

"It rains a lot this time of year."

"I skip a lot."

She regarded me with an expression that conveyed casual amusement. Her lips were curled into a thin smile, and her eyes were bright. "Can I ask what you're writing?" she said, indicating the notebook I was holding. "Is it engineering stuff?"

Unconsciously, I found myself tilting the paper away from her slightly, like I was afraid she'd read it from where she was sitting. "It's not engineering," I replied. "It's, uhh, it's private."

She grinned like cat who's caught a mouse. "So, it's for your girlfriend, then?"

I laughed. "No, nothing like that."

"Well what is it, then?"

"I, well, it's a short story," I confessed. "I skip school when it rains, and I come here to write."

Her grin widened. "An engineering student who writes short stories, hmm?"

"I told you, I hate engineering."

"Then why are you studying it?"

I knew this would come up eventually. It always does. This is why I don't talk to other ponies. I sighed. Setting aside my quill and notebook, I stood up and displayed my thigh to her. "You see?" I said, nodding to my cutiemark, "it's what I'm supposed to do."

There, for the world, or at least this mare, to see, was the thing I'd always tried to deny. My cutiemark, a trio of cogs working in perfect tandem, was emblazoned on my flank like a brand. I could never escape it.

She frowned. "Well, that does seem to mean you're in the right place." She watched me as I sat back down. "How'd you get it?"

I grabbed my quill and notebook again, staring down at the empty page. "When I was a foal, I loved playing with building blocks, and I used to make these huge buildings and massive towers. One day, I was in the middle of building an entire city and it just showed up, like that." I smiled despite myself. "I remember being so excited."

"What we want as foals, and what we want as adults isn't always the same. Ponies, like everything else, change with time." She stretched out a wing and dipped it into the pond, swirling it about. "Maybe your cutiemark got it wrong?"

Tapping the paper with my quill, I replied, “Destiny doesn’t get things wrong. This is what I’m supposed to do.”

Her wing tensed suddenly, sending a wave of ripples through the water. She withdrew it slowly and flicked the water off. “Destiny isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Take it from me.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It just means that maybe your destiny isn’t what you thought it is.” She sighed, folded her wing against her side and went silent.

The rest of the morning passed with neither her nor I speaking much more. There was the occasional passing remark, but we largely kept to ourselves. She seemed transfixed by the sky, leaning outside of the protection of the dock to look up at the clouds swirling overhead, her mouth open as she caught raindrops in her mouth. I, on the other hand, kept my snout down as I wrote more and more, ideas springing into my head like daisies as the quill moved across the page. Every time the next line of dialogue, or the next paragraph of narration sprung into my head, another jumped up as soon as I was done to keep my going.

When the afternoon finally came, and the clouds began to clear, the rain slowing and eventually stopping, she stood up and said goodbye to me before walking off. I watched her go, still sitting the whole time, until she had disappeared behind a treeline. When I finally couldn’t see her anymore, I shoved my quill, ink, and paper into my bag, slung it over my back, and left the park.

As I was walking back to my apartment, I found my thoughts continually drifting back to that mare who I’d only just realized never told me her name. I was sure that would be the last time I’d ever see her, and the thought saddened me a bit. I pushed that out of my mind as I reached my apartment building. Climbing the stairs, I passed a couple of ponies on their way down and I went through the same routine as with the ponies on the bus, but before I got much further than them bumping into each other, I reached my floor and was shaken out of my thoughts by a familiar voice.

“Hey, man!”

I looked up and saw my classmate waving at me. I waved back, then turned towards my door. As I was opening it, my classmate came up beside me and leaned against the wall. He had a concerned look on his face, but the way his eyes lit up told me he wasn’t that concerned.

“How come you weren’t in class again today? The professor was looking for you.”

“I wasn’t feeling too well,” I replied. “Figured it’d be better if I just skipped and got some rest.”

“Y’know,” he said, giving me an accusatory look, “one of these days that excuse is going to stop working.”

I smiled at him and pushed open my door. As I stepped inside, I looked back at him and said, “Maybe,” then closed the door and locked it.

The next few days passed without incident. The weather team had finished their job for the time being, and the sky was calm. Since there was no rain, I attended class like I was supposed to. Sitting at my desk, listening to the professor lecture, I kept glancing out the window, hoping that I’d see rain hitting the windows, but it was perfectly sunny.

After awhile, I stopped paying attention during class and started writing more. I couldn’t stop. Every time I sat down at my desk, and the professor started to speak, I was overcome with the urge to write. I’d pull out some blank paper and start writing, adding more and more to the story I’d started the day I met that mare. As the number of filled pages grew, so too did my desire for the rain to come back. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long.

That Thursday, when I woke in the morning, and rolled over to look out the window, I saw something that made my heart soar into the melodramatic gray sky. Rain streaked my window, and when I looked out, I could see the whole city was soaked.

Leaping out of bed, I quickly dressed and grabbed my bag before hurrying down the steps to the bus stop. A few minutes later and I was standing outside the park, my thoughts on the pier and my writing, which had been coming along nicely over the last few days.

The rain drizzled down like a curtain, obscuring everything with its haze in a foggy, dream-like manner. I made my way through the park and along the bank of the pond, finally coming upon the pier. All of a sudden, my heart stopped.

There she was... that mare with the sunset red mane. She noticed me as I got closer, and she waved to me with her wing and a cheery smile on her face.

I stood still for a moment, the rain soaking through my bag and past my already-wet fur. With great effort, I took another step and felt my hooves make dull thudding noises as I stepped onto the pier.

"Morning," I said as I sat down and opened my bag. "I didn't expect to see you here again. Don't you have work or something?"

She smiled at me, chuckling quietly. "Said the kettle. You're supposed to be in class, aren't you?"

"At least I go to college some days."

"How do you know I don't go to work some days? Maybe I only skip when it rains, like you." She gave me a sly grin.

I shrugged. "I guess I don't know."

As I pulled out my notebook, I half expected her to say something, but she merely leaned her head against the wooden beam and stared wistfully into the distance. Somewhat disappointed, I took my the quill and began to write. For a few minutes, I went along in silence, then it was broken when I heard her speak again.

"Hey," she said softly.

I looked up.

"Why the quill and ink? Wouldn't it be easier to use a pencil?"

I glanced down at the quill held in my magic. No one had ever asked me that before, and I wasn't sure I knew the answer.

"I don't know," I said truthfully. "I just like the way it feels against the paper, I suppose."

"Why not use parchment then?"

I laughed. "I'd love to, but it's a bit too expensive for me, and it's kind of hard to find."

"Ah..."

Silence returned, and the only sound I could hear was the patter of rain against the ceiling, and my own gentle breaths. I wrote for what felt like hours, and it was only when I looked up that I noticed she was gone. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and the rain had all but vanished in that short period of time.

I looked around, thinking that maybe she had just walked somewhere else in the park, but I didn't see her anywhere. With a muted sigh, I stuffed my quill and notebook back into my bag.

The next day, the rain was back, and it was coming down hard this time. I had to sprint to the bus stop with my head covered to make sure I wasn't soaked completely to the bone. As the bus rumbled along, I looked up at the sky and felt elated.

By the time I reached the botanical gardens, the streets were running like shallow rivers. Splashing through the puddles, I made my way across the street and towards the entrance. When I got there, my heart sank into my chest immediately.

A sign hung from the closed gates.

"Closed Due to Heavy Rain," it said in big letters.

I stared silently at the sign for awhile.

"That's too bad," came a female voice from behind me.

I spun around. An auburn mare with silver eyes was frowning back at me.

"I love sitting in the park when it rains," she said with a sigh.

I muttered under my breath, "Me too."

Resigned to the fact that I wasn't getting in, I turned around and headed back to the bus stop. About fifteen minutes later the bus cane and I took it all the way to Canterlot University.

When I got to class, the professor gave me an odd look.

"You're late," she said. "And you're soaking wet."

"I missed the bus," I lied.

She didn't seem to believe me, because her eyebrow rose at that statement, but she said nothing else and I sat down. As she continued her lecture, I stared out the window with my head resting against my hoof. Eventually, I pulled the notebook from my bag and began to write again.

That afternoon, when all my classes were over, I went back to my apartment. My classmate was there looking out over the balcony when I came out of the stairwell. He caught me out of the corner of his eye and waved me over. He pointed to a far-off cloud formation.

“Weather team’s making a huge storm for tomorrow apparently,” he said. “Gonna be lightning and everything.”

I frowned. “How come?”

He shrugged. “Dunno, probably because the last few days have been so light. They gotta get at least one big storm in before the season is over.”

He glanced sidelong at me. “You gonna skip tomorrow?”

I turned away from the balcony and went to my door. “I don’t know,” I said, opening the door and entering my apartment.

When the door closed fully, I slid down it and slumped to the ground. Holding my head in my hooves, I sat there for a moment, staring at the ground.

Dawn broke the next morning, pouring light through the window and casting lines over my face. I stirred, rolling over to look out the window where a perfectly clear sky was visible, and the sun was shining bright.

I got ready like I usually did, and when I was done, headed out the door, only to run into my classmate again.

“Hey,” I said, catching him before he disappeared down the stairwell, “wasn’t there supposed to be a storm today?”

He shrugged. “That’s what I heard, but maybe they cancelled it?”

“Yeah, maybe…”

I followed him down the stairs and waited at the bus stop with him. As we stood in the clear sunshine, my eyes wandered down the street. There, at the corner, I saw the bus turn towards us. The 36-A bumped along until it came to a stop before us. As the doors slid open, I felt a touch of something wet on my back.

I looked up. The sky was slowly turning gray as more and more clouds were brought in, and I felt another drop of rain hit my neck, followed by one on my snout. A smile split across my face. My classmate looked back at me as he boarded the bus.

“You gettin’ on, man?”

I shook my head, and he shrugged. As the doors slid shut again, the rain started to come down in greater amounts. Within seconds, it was back to how it had been before, and great sheets of rain lashed at the sides of buildings and the sidewalks. I stared up at the sky and smiled.

A few minutes later the bus arrived and I boarded it. Not too long after that and I was back standing outside the gardens. The gate was open this time, and there was no sign preventing me from entering.

I hurried along the path, around the pond, and came to the pier… only the pier.

My chest felt heavy, and as I quickly hurried beneath the roof of the pier, I looked around, but the garden was as empty as the sky had been not half an hour before. The mare wasn’t there, and I was alone in the park.

I waited for a few minutes before pulling out my notebook, and then a few more minutes before I started writing anything. The words didn’t flow as easily as they had been, and though I was reaching the end of the story, I found it difficult to keep going, always stopping to look over towards the entrance of the park, only to see that it was still barren of any other ponies. Finally, as I was reaching the last page, I noticed a familiar looking mare approaching.

My heart skipped a beat. Watching as she came closer, I saw that it was in fact the mare, and my heart soared. She was using a plastic bag to cover her head as she walked around the pond, and her wings were holding it up.

Stepping onto the pier, she shook off the water and sat herself across from me. She smiled, holding out the plastic bag.

“Take it,” she said, holding it out a little further.

Cautiously, I took the bag and opened it up. Inside was a stack of paper tied together with a string. But it wasn’t just any paper, it was parchment. It felt so thick and heavy when I lifted it out of the bag. As I ran a hoof along the edge of the paper, feeling its uneven, rough texture, I smiled.

I looked up at the mare. “I… thanks, but—” I cocked my head to the side “—why?”

She shrugged, spreading out her hooves. “I just happened to see it somewhere, and I figured you could probably use some.” She held up a single hoof. “However, it does come with one condition.”

I raised an eyebrow, carefully setting the parchment down. “What’s that?”

Her lips tugged into a cheeky grin. “You have to show me what you’ve been writing all this time.”

“What!? No, absolutely not. It’s private,” I said, already sure that she was going to have her way, but hoping I could still at least pretend to fight it.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, how private could it be? You want to get published, right? Somepony’s going to have to read your story eventually.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that.”

“No, you can’t.”

Heaving a long sigh, I reluctantly pulled out my notebook and held it out for her. “It’s not finished yet,” I warned. “Try not to laugh, at least.”

She waved her hoof dismissively. “Please, how bad can it be?” She chuckled, taking the notebook with her hooves and opening it in her lap.

As she began to read, her eyes scanning back and forth across the pages, I felt my stomach turn over, and my heart pounding against my ribcage. I’d never shown anyone my writing before, so why was I showing her? I couldn’t answer that, but I felt an incredibly electric excitement as she flipped through page after page. It was terrifying, and yet exhilarating at the same time. With every facial expression, from a slight frown, to a soft smile, I felt my anticipation growing ever greater.

I sat silently, watching her flip through my notebook as she made little noises and mumbled under her breath. I couldn’t make out anything she was saying, but when she finished, handing the notebook back to me, she told me herself.

“Not bad,” she said. “You’ve got a decent style, but…”

My heart sank. “But?”

She pursed her lips, absentmindedly tapping her hoof against the pier. “Well, it’s a love story, but… I’m not sure you understand what love is.”

I blinked a few times. “What?”

“Have you ever been in love?”

I considered the question. My immediate instinct was to answer yes, but the more I thought about it, the more that I realized I really hadn’t been. I’d had girlfriends, sure, but I wouldn’t say that I was in love with any of them. So, after a bit of thought, I answered, “No, I haven’t.”

She nodded. “I didn’t think so. How do you expect to write about love, if you don’t know what love is and haven’t experienced it for yourself?”

“Well, don’t ponies do that all the time?”

“I’m sure they do, but you can always tell which authors have been in love, and which haven’t.” She sighed softly, her chest puffing out as she sucked in her breath afterwards. “The way you have it written, two ponies just bump into each other randomly, and then fall in love after spending a bit of time together, but that’s not really how it works. They have almost nothing in common, and they don’t even really speak all that much, but you have them like they’ve known each other their whole lives. They talk, what, four or five times and suddenly they’re in love?” She shook her head. “Love isn’t that simple.”

Her words hit me like a gut punch, but I tried to keep my footing. “Well, what about love at first sight?”

“Only in romance novels does that happen.”

“True love?”

“A fairytale. True love is a myth, like destiny. Sometimes you’re wrong about what you think it means.”

“But then… what am I supposed to do? How do I write a story about true love if it doesn’t exist?”

She laughed, standing up. As she stretched out her wings, she said, “True love may not exist, but love certainly does. Go out and meet some mare who’ll make you happy. Maybe if you didn’t spend all your time here at the park, you’d have somepony who loves you.” She gave me a nod, then turned to the pond. “I’ve gotta be somewhere, so I’ll see you around. Think about what I said.” With that, she flapped her wings and headed off towards the city.

I found myself staring down at the parchment beside me, and I felt a funny feeling in my chest. There was an emptiness there that I hadn’t been aware of before. As she flew further away, turning into just a speck of color against the gray, I started to wonder if maybe she was right.

After that day at the gardens, there were three straight weeks of sunshine in Canterlot, and I had spent all of that time rewriting the story from scratch. When the rain finally came again, I was less enthusiastic, and more determined.

I stood outside the park, like I had done so many times before, and felt the rain trickling down my back and over my face. I took a deep breath, and entered the gardens, heading straight for the pier. When I came to it, I was relieved to see that she was already there, and was sitting on the end of the pier with her hooves dangling in the water, kicking them around playfully.

Walking along the pier, I sat down next to her and let my hooves rest in the pond as well. I looked over at her, and she smiled at me. I smiled back. When I set my bag aside and went to grab the notebook from it, filled with an improved version of the story I’d shown her before, she said something that made me stop.

“I’m afraid of lightning,” she said.

It was so sudden, and came from seemingly nowhere. I stopped, left the bag alone and looked back at her.

“You’re afraid of lighting?”

She nodded, leaning back so she was laying against the pier and staring up at the roof. “It’s funny, isn’t it? A weather pegasus who’s afraid of the weather.”

“I didn’t know you were on the weather team.”

“Am.”

“You still are?”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Well, I suppose I won’t be for much longer.” She rolled over and looked me in the eye. “I’m going back to Fillydelphia next week.”

I couldn’t look into her eyes, so I looked down at my chest, then said, “I was thinking about what you said, about love and how I don’t know what it is.”

That self-sure smile from before came back to her face and she said, “Oh? Tell me, then.”

“I think I do know what love is. I think… I think that I love you.” I leaned forward, closing my eyes as I pursed my lips. But instead of feeling her lips against mine, I felt her hoof. When I opened my eyes again, she was smiling at me still, but it was a different smile. She smiled at me the way an adult smiles at a foal when they show you their school project.

“You’re a sweet kid, but… I don’t think you understand yet.” Her smile turned sad as she slowly pushed herself up and pulled her hooves from the water. “I’m married,” she said. “I came here that day to get away from my husband, and from weather duty. It wasn’t fate, or destiny that brought us together, just simple chance.”

“But…”

She stood up and brushed herself off. Patting me on the head, she said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t love you.” With those final words, she turned away and started to leave the pier.

Before she got to the end though, I yelled at her, “I was wrong!”

She stopped, slowly turned around.

“I thought I loved you, but actually, I hate you.”

She said nothing.

I stood up and faced her, my eyes not just wet from the rain. “At least I’m not running away from my problems! You’re afraid of lightning, so you hide here when you should be doing your job. You ran away from your husband. You’re running away from me now.”

“And you?” she said, in a voice that was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear it. “What are you doing here?”

I froze.

“You’re the same as me, you just don’t want to admit it.”

I shook my head. “No, you’re wrong. I’m not running from my problems because I’m afraid of them. I’m trying to follow my heart. You’re just doing what’s easiest.”

She let out one short laugh. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you are better than me.” She shrugged. “But I’m leaving either way.” Turning away, she started to walk away again.

I called out to her again, but she didn’t stop. “You were wrong about another thing!” I yelled after her. “Finding love isn’t the first step in writing about love.”

She paused for a brief moment, but didn’t look back.

“Losing it is…”

When I finished, she started walking away again, and I watched her go, not taking my eyes off her until she was gone, around the corner and past the trees. I blinked back tears and turned away from her. As I slumped down against a wooden beam, I grabbed my notebook from the bag and tore out all the pages I’d spent the last few weeks writing. Balling them up, I threw them into the water where the rain soaked through them, sinking them to the bottom of the pond.

Turning to a fresh piece of parchment, I dipped my quill into the ink and started writing. I wrote through the rest of the day, and when the sun came out, spilling across the verdant gardens, I held up the work I’d done so far and admired it. The sun came through the trees in just the right way that it fell across the title I’d hastily scribbled across the top of the first page.

Rain