Rain

• Fern Campbell, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2019

A thousand tears from the heavens stream down. She sits on the bench, reaching into a new world between the covers of an ancient book, the spine decaying, the edge of each page fraying from the many hands that have held it. It holds a million secrets, from all sorts of people. She cries as she reads it, her hands shaking as she reaches for her coffee that she set down hours ago. The tiny notes scrawled onto the margins are close to impossible to read, something is behind her, but she is to immersed in the plot to care, so she sits and waits for the feeling to pass, all the while this ancient book grasped in her fingers, she feels a tear roll down her cheek, it is warmer than the rain. She is silhouetted by the gas street lamp next to her, her dress a pale lavender, soaked through, and her feet bare, she walks to the top of a hill, where she looks out over a dark city, illuminated only by the few gas street lamps still in use, the sky is clear and she lies down in the damp grass, to watch the stars. Oh, to be lost in a world of your own design.