The Weatherman

Part 2

     Spring. The young woman started returning to the bench every afternoon, sketching some of the delicate displays of Snowdrops and Bluebells which the Weatherman made for her every evening. Her sketchbook was becoming close to full. The Weatherman would watch silently as each new page was slowly filled with lots of little lines, which after several minutes, began to form little pictures. He marvelled at the way she could produce such wonderful pictures from what he provided, and felt proud that he could inspire the woman he had fallen in love with.

     Almost a year after the first day she sat down on the bench, the young woman reached her final page. The Weatherman's heart sank slightly in knowing that he couldn't help. The young woman sighed, deciding not to draw anything that particular day, and chose instead to return home early to water her flower arrangements.

     The Weatherman remained on the bench that night. He thought quietly to himself for a while before he decided what to do.

     Two days later, the Weatherman was making his way back to the bench in the park. In his hands, he cradled a new sketchbook. Its pages were made from the finest wood he could find, which he shaved and carved with incredible care, just like he did when he made the sheets of ice for the lake. They were bound by gutstring to a rich leather spine which was a deep, dark brown to match the young woman's chocolate eyes. The cover was of the same leather, which the Weatherman had found in a small mountain village thousands of miles away, bearing no letters or text.

     The inside cover bore a simple message from the Weatherman, written carefully in his own hand. He had never written anything before, so scribing the intricate letters had been a great challenge to him.

     Walking towards the bench, the Weatherman could see the young woman already perched in place, almost like she had been waiting for him. He smiled widely as he continued to approach her.

     A small noise behind the Weatherman caused the young woman to jump, and she immediately looked up to see what had happened. Her face lit up, glowing warmly as she lifted her eyes to look straight into the Weatherman's.

     Could it be? Could she finally be noticing him? Had he somehow become visible to her? Had she been pretending not to notice all this time? She was looking straight at him! And smiling!

     The Weatherman felt his heart speed up. The beating began to hurt his ribs as it echoed in his throat. She could see him! A grin wider than any ocean burst out across his face, and he began to laugh. He held out the new sketchbook, ready to hand it to her, when something ripped through his very body.

     The pain twisted his insides as he fell to his knees and winced, dropping the sketchbook. What had happened? Everything had been so perfect! Regaining his breath, he tried to clear the cloudiness from his eyes as he searched for the source of all the pain.

     When he could see once more, the Weatherman looked around, panting from the shock. Straight ahead of him, a tall man, about the same age as the young woman, was approaching the bench. The fallen sketchbook, suddenly visible, caught his eye, and he turned and lifted it. The Weatherman jumped forward to try and reach it first, but he was too late, and came crashing down on the path in the dust.

     The tall man was standing above, looking puzzled as he flicked through the pages of the sketchbook which had jumped out of thin air in front of him not five seconds ago. The Weatherman helplessly watched him from the ground, knowing that he couldn't possible touch the man without alarming him.

     Never, in all his centuries of living unnoticed, had the Weatherman made such a huge mess. He had always made sure to stay out of the way, to prevent himself from being seen, and in the space of about four seconds, he had drawn attention to hi self twice. The man had to have felt something when he walked through the Weatherman,  there was no way it hadn't shaken him. The tearing, ripping pain from being passed through couldn't only have worked one way. Even if he hadn't noticed, the sketchbook was definitely a compromise to the Weatherman's invisibility, dropping seemingly out of nowhere and falling heavily to the ground.

     Apparently not having felt the same pain as the Weatherman, the tall man turned again and continued towards the bench. The young woman stood up as he neared and smiled brightly at him. They took a few seconds to regard the fallen sketchbook before the young woman offered to put it in her bag. The two then forgot their momentary confusion and took one another by the hand before smiling at each other once more and walking off down the path.

   As the Weatherman lay on the ground, still staring at the bench with his arm still reaching for the book, a single tear, full of two thousand years' burning, painful emotions, ran quietly over his cheek. It careered down the side of his face, pausing when it reached his chin. It hung for just a second before falling heavily to the ground as the first drop of the torrential downpour that came along with the unstoppable release of all the Weatherman's timeless, walled-up emotions.

     The rain did not stop for weeks. Every hour that passed, the Weatherman would try to separate the young woman from the tall man. He longed to see the tall man leave. He felt physical pain when the tall man was with the one he loved. A new emotion exploded within him with greater force with every meeting the couple shared. It burned and ripped and tore and shredded and spat and screamed and seared and flamed and raged and roared and ravaged

 and it hated.