Loving Rain (Watty Awards 2011)

Chapter 2 - The Beginning

Loving Rain - Ch. 2

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Alan and I grew closer each day. He made sure that all of his servants knew to cater to my every need, and I never fell lack of anything. Just a few days after the dance, a seamstress came and made me a whole wardrobe full of nice, fancy dresses. I loved them all, but none of them were ever as beautiful as the green one I had worn that night.

               Often times we would stroll through the castle together, telling each other stories of our lives before we met each other. I began to notice that when Alan laughed, the joyous sound of it vibrated off of the stone walls, filling the whole castle. I liked that laugh, and soon it began to not only fill up the castle, but it filled me as well. I thought of new ways to make him laugh every day, and I was surprised to find that I was good at it.

               One day, Alan took me out into the castle garden. He made me close my eyes at first, and when we were finally in the middle, he told me to open them. I was shocked. Every single flower that you could ever name was in this place, and right in the middle was a fountain with a statue of an angel. Water fell from the angel’s hands like handfuls of rain. I giggled at the irony of it. “Here,” Alan told me, handing me a rose. It was pure white, and I had never seen a rose so beautiful.

               “Alan,” I said, speechless, taking the flower from him. He smiled at me, and I was so caught up in the shine of his smile that I didn’t notice that I had pricked my finger on a thorn until his eyes grew concerned.

               “You’re bleeding,” he said, as though he had never seen anyone bleed before.

               “Oh,” I said, sticking the finger in my mouth and sucking on it. “I’m sorry.”

               “Come,” he ordered, and then he picked me up and carried me to my room. He laid me in my bed and made sure I stayed there the rest of the day. He paced back and forth at the foot of my bed until finally I told him that I couldn’t stand it anymore, that I was perfectly fine, and that he needed to stop worrying. “I only wanted to make sure that nothing happened to you,” he said. His eyes stared into mine, penetrating and sparkling.

               We spent months like that, just spending time together, and getting to know each other. The day before my fifteenth birthday, Alan noticed that I was sad. “What is it, Rain?” he asked me. “Do you need anything?”

               “No,” I told him. “I was just thinking about how every year on my birthday, my parents would bake me a cake, and then I would curl up with my cat and eat it while I read. They always bought me a new book for my birthday.”

               He sat down on my bed. It was night time, and he had just been dropping me off at my room like he did every night before I went to sleep. He didn’t like me roaming the almost empty castle by myself. “Did you always do everything with your cat?”

               I smiled. “Yes. Milky Way was almost glued to my side. He followed me everywhere. He really liked to be cuddled. He had the softest fur you could ever imagine.” Actually, I knew that I was lying. There were several times when I had touched Alan’s own fur, and it was so soft that it was almost like touching a cloud. I would never tell him that, though.

               Alan sighed. “I’m sorry that I don’t have a cat to take his place. If I had known that you would want a cat, I could’ve had one imported from Egypt. They almost worship cats there, you know.”

               I laughed at him, and laid back onto my pillows. They were made of down, and I loved sleeping on them. “It’s alright, Alan. I don’t think any cat could ever take Milky Way’s place anyway.”