Loving Rain (Watty Awards 2011)

Chapter 1 - The Beast

Loving Rain - Ch. 1

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None of us are really ever there on the day that we’re born, but there are always stories that follow us. The town’s ladies look at you, smiling and happy, and begin reminiscing about how beautiful you were and what a miracle any birth is. No one escapes this, but sometimes the word alive has a different meaning for people, and then there are stories that will always be used as a way to communicate the belief that there must be a higher power, because some people wouldn’t be here without it.

               My story is one of those. The midwives waited for hours and hours for my arrival, but I was stubborn and had decided not to make it a very easy labor. Mother began to think that something was wrong, and that I would be stillborn with no hope, but then the calm drizzle of rain began to patter on the roof and kept her calm. “Look, Robert,” she had said to my father. “The rain is so beautiful.”

               After that, I’ve been told, everything went fine. Father was the first to hold me, and his eyes met mine with the realization that he finally had a daughter, and from that moment on he would give anything for me. I was named Rain, so that the story of my birth would never be entirely lost.

               It seemed to fit, because there were so many different meanings behind it. I could be the gentle drops that fall on your head before your first kiss, or the icy drips that plummet to the ground just as the thunder begins to roll. I lived up to every single one of those meanings, too. They told me that I was never a normal child, always happy and playing. Instead, my body was a whirlwind of different emotions, almost like there was more than one soul trapped inside.

               So, that’s who I was. But this story isn’t really about that girl. This story is about who I became.

               When I turned fourteen, my father and I took a trip to the city to buy me a brand new dress, so I could go to a dance in the castle. Everyone for miles around was excited about this dance; it was the first time in years that anyone had even heard from the royal family. The castle almost seemed to be nothing more but haunted by the ghosts of the people who once ruled over our land. But then the invitation went out, and every family with a teenage daughter received one.

               The day that my invitation arrived I was out in the flower garden, petting my cat, Milky Way. He had just been ill, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to fully recover or not. My parents had warned me that he might not live much longer, and I didn’t want to waste a single second away from him. We always had that special kind of bond that everyone wants to find in a best friend or a lover, but my connection just happened to be with this furry little creature that I had found near the forest when he was only a kitten. When I called out to him, he came right up to me. It was hard, knowing that you might lose the one thing you counted as a little piece of your own heart.

               I saw Mr. Wilbur coming up to our house before anyone else did. “Father!” I called out, knowing he was working the fields and would want to be here to meet his friend. He looked up at me from the crops he was tending, and then his eyes drifted to the road. His hoe went down to the ground and walked out to meet the other man. I watched them talk for quite awhile, and when Father started to come back, he had an envelope in his hand. My eyes followed Mr. Wilbur as he walked away, and just before he was out of sight, he turned back around and tipped his hat to me in a way that seemed more like a farewell than a little goodbye. I waved, but I wasn’t quite sure why he had done that.

               “What is it, Father?” I asked as soon as he got close enough.

               He didn’t even look at me. “It’s nothing, dear.” When he walked through the house door, he whispered to Mother and I knew this must be serious. They never whispered around me. Father said that we were a family, and that a family shouldn’t have secrets from each other. I stood up and walked around with Milky Way some more, his body hugged tight to my chest, and then Mother hollered that it was time for dinner.