April Showers

And when she was sad, it always rained. And when she was happy, it always shone.  And when she was angry, as she often was, her fury swept up storms; temper formed tempests, confusion brought gales.

This was the power of Iris Snow, a teenage girl in an isolated town.

 The villagers had grown used to these strange turns of weather. Most of them had learned to accept them as a form of natural calamity, of bad luck bestowed upon the town. Likewise, most of them grew to know the girl called Iris as a tormented character; a volatile child who was subject to changes of mood as fast as the ever-inclement weather.

But after some years the villagers grew restless. Many of them considered moving out; away to some place that was constant and calm. But nobody ever left. Nobody knew exactly what it was that connected them to this place, but its soul seemed entwined with theirs, and the only thing that changed was the weather.

April the sixteenth. A gale swept through the town, a raging thunderstorm that, as usual, was the inevitable prologue to a dramatic downpour. The inhabitants huddled tight in their homes, some staring out of their windows at the strange girl Iris who screamed in the Square, in a tantrum of her own in a world to which only she belonged.

As usual, nobody knew the cause. Nobody ever cared to ask. They put it down to hormones; to teenage mood swings, to young emotions. But they could never understand why she would always be the last one standing outside in the storm; in the rain, in the downpours, alone.

Her movements died down and her footsteps ceased as she collapsed on the cobblestones, droplets forming tracks on her face as the dry thunder gave way to a torrent of rain. Salt and rainwater mixed as one as she sobbed quietly, hopelessly. The villagers watched her through netted curtain veils, behind panes of glass.

One footstep, another. A leather-bound foot entered her low range of vision.

“Excuse me,” A gentle voice asked. “I was coming this way, and the weather was fine, and the storm suddenly appeared.”

She glanced up, in panic. A young man’s face greeted her, a hat held in one hand as he spoke to her, despite the water trailing dripping from his hair.

“I was wondering if you could direct me to the nearest hotel?” His statement was phrased carefully, the lightening of tone near the end turning the sentence into a question.

Slowly, falteringly, she stood up. Around her, the downpour began to cease, the droplets becoming less violent, a gentle spray.

“You spoke to me,” she said wonderingly, staring far into his confused expression.

“I’m sorry?”

“You came over to me and spoke to me. Right here. In this Square.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Nobody ever does that.”

Confused, he took a half-step back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

With a speed that shocked both parties, her fingers reached out and tightened around his wrist. “No, please.”

Around them, all grew still.

They stared for a moment. Neither moved. Two eyes met two eyes, witnessed by the dozens of bewildered spectators that lined the windows, disbelieving of the sight before them.

Her fingers awkwardly unfurled to a greeting palm. “I’m Iris. Iris Snow.”

Indecisiveness flickering across his face, his features soon brightened into a smile, then a laugh. His palm met hers. “That’s strange. Cyrus. Cyrus Frost.”

She laughed. “Must be fate.”

He laughed, in reply. “Must be, Iris.”

She stared fixatedly at their hands, fitting so neatly together in their mutual grasp. She examined the lines, the details, the grooves. Her mouth quivered for a moment before she spoke.

“So you’re a traveller.”

“I’d call myself more of a businessman, actually. Looking for the next great adventure. But for now it’s mostly hitchhiking.” He chuckled. “I’ve had enough of storms.”

Glaring at some indiscriminate point over his shoulder, she snorted quietly. “Me too.”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t-”

“It’s just this place, see?” She spoke quickly, furiously, as winds blew her hair in every direction. “There’s always storms. Always. And winds and rain and hurricanes. But nobody does anything about them. They just hole themselves up inside. Sheltered inside their little walls. They won’t go out and face them.”

She released his hand and paced up and down, a controlled form of wildness. He sat down on a bench and listened, an amused expression in his eyes.

“There’s not a lot you can do about a storm,” He said playfully.

“But you don’t have to hide from it. You can confront it.”

He leant back. “So you’re proposing that everyone come out and shout at a storm?”

She snorted. “Better than hiding behind curtains and watching as it progresses.” Her voice rose in a steady crescendo as she spoke. A few figures retreated from the ghost-like windows.

Almost immediately she sagged, collapsing on the bench next to the man. They sat there in silence for a moment, him watching her, she looking out to the mist-covered mountains behind the house roofs.

Many minutes passed. The storm rose and fell and rose again. The gutters became flooded and fell again. For a moment a brief snatch of sunlight could be seen, only to be hastily hidden by a fast-moving cloud.

Still he did not watch the weather. Still he did not move. Neither did she. The two sat there in the Memorial Square, as around them everything changed constantly, the change so common it became a consistency; something dull, something average.

The moment came to an end. He stood up sharply, collecting his briefcase and wrapping his longcoat around him to keep out the bitter cold, and took a few paces forward.

Almost immediately, a torrent of water fell from the sky. It reached into him, passing through the layers of his clothes to the bare skin underneath; chilling him to the core. They could have been angels’ tears, had the source been more beautiful, more pure, more melancholy.

He half-turned, to find the girl, that strange girl Iris Snow, on whom had been bestowed such a strange and terrible gift, had stood up. They stood there for that moment, in that Memorial Square in that small town that was so dull and so different, and maybe he realised and maybe he didn’t.

He smirked. “Are you coming?”

The water stopped.