The Anatomy of a Raindrop

winter song

She thought she heard music.

But her ears were mistaken by what was actually just the singing of the wind. It was beautiful, a symphony of howls and notes. It flew past her ears in rhythms and beats, calming yet exciting. Brinley knew that the wind would be the last song she ever heard.

Wrennyn Portman, the intelligent yet oblivious boy, continued to drone on about some new band that had recently risen in Seattle. If he had known that his love was in peril he would have made her hang up and call for help; Brinley knew this and therefore made sure that he would never find out.

The wind grew tired and ended it's song.

Brinley shivered, her exposed toes were starting to turn blue and her teeth would not stop chattering. For a second, she had started to envy Wrennyn; he was content. It's amazing, Brinley thought, how people take things like a heated car or talking to a loved one on the phone for granted. And you don't realize how great those things are until you can't have them.

There was Brinley Jones, a beautiful, caring, and generally good person- and she was lying on the side of a road she had frequently drove on, covered in her own blood and freezing in the rain. She had always thought that she would grow old, mary Wrennyn, have kids, live in a nice house. But here she was, her life cut so short. Why?

Wrennyn would live to wrinkle and grey, to laugh, to cry; he would have ups, he would have downs; he would live. And Brinley wouldn't. She would before her twentieth Christmas dinner.

And Wrennyn would live.

No, she thought again. He wouldn't. He wouldn't live the same life he was supposed to live. He was supposed to live with Brinley, to spend the rest of his life with her.

At least, that's what Brinley had thought.

Really there was no way to know. Maybe...

The fatalistic raindrop that was forming above Brinley's ebony hair, gained weight. It held the determination of an angle.

"Brin," Wrennyn snapped. She hadn't spoken in several seconds.

"Yeah," she responded, letting her envy go. As unfair to her as it was, it was just as unfair to the boy- if not more- because he would have to live in a world without Brinley Jones.

"What do you think?"

"Think about what?"

"I was rethinking your question? You know 'what my favorite memory of you was?'"

"Oh, right. Sorry. What was it?"

"The first time I told you I loved you. Like- really meant it."

At the sound of Wrennyn's kind words Brinley's cheeks turned crimson and her eyes started stinging with tears again. She remembered the moment vividly and in that moment she would have given anything to go back there.

"We never did go on tour," she whispered, her voice cracking slightly. She longed for a time that never happened and never would.

"I promise you, as soon as we finish up this Christmas dinner, I'm throwing you in the car and we are going down to Los Angeles and we are going to become famous."

Brinley would usually make a sarcastic comment at something like this, but now Wrennyn's promise just made her upset. She knew how much she missed out on in life. She knew that she would never go anywhere with the boy ever again.

She knew this feeling- the feeling of emptiness that came with losing a person- but now it was different. She wasn't losing a friend, she was losing herself. At least with losing someone you love you can go on with your life, even if it doesn't seem like it, you can. But Brinley couldn't. Her life was ending.

"There is so much I want to do with you Wrenny," she finally said. "I want to travel around the world and try weird food and- and... I just want to be with you. I want to spend every second with you. I don't want to lose you Wrenny-"

At this point she was balling. Tears no longer slid down her cheeks, but fell hard on her maroon sweater. A mixture of blood and snot dripped flowed out of her nose and down her soft lips. The taste of copper filled her mouth and she gagged.

"Babe what are you talking about?"

Brinley calmed herself down, afraid of him figuring out that she was in trouble. She didn't want him to know that she was already dead and that there was nothing he could do about it.

"I just want to make sure you know that I care about you, okay? I don't know, I was just reading Me Before You before I started driving down here and it got me all sad."

"Brin, what's wrong sweetie?"

"Nothing, I promise. You know how emotional I get around the holidays," she half-lied. Wrennyn went silent. He gripped the steering wheel of his truck tighter and bit his lip. He knew very well that his girlfriend was, without fail, hit with a freight train of depression around this time. He was too.

"Do you miss him?" Wrennyn choked. Brinley exhaled slowly in an attempt to stop her tears from flowing again.

"Every day," she whimpered. Her withering heart ached with a pain worse than death. A moment passed in which no noise came through either end on the phone. And that silence was comforting. Brinley knew, Wrennyn knew.

The music of silence had always comforted them.