A Drop of Rain

Colors

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The incessant thunder of the rain on the roof pounded away, gently falling around her ears, dripping against the glass of the skylight, rushing up to the ground. She opened her eyes, the frothing grey sky coming into view through the window. The rain rushed toward her face, disorienting, blurring, falling on and on.

She turned over, the warm, fleecy blankets snagging on her legs, wrapping around themselves, and rolled out of her bed. Cold air rushed against her bare, lean limbs, the smooth wood floor shockingly frigid against the bare soles of her feet.

Ibaki's head spun slightly, a fuzz of static shooting across her vision before fading away. A distant rumble of thunder rocked the outside world, closely following the bright streaks that highlighted the tossing branches of the trees outside.

The bathroom tiles were even colder, like ice beneath her feet. Ibaki leaned over the sink, steadying herself against the marble cabinet, and glanced up. Thick, ginger tangles hung in her face, catching a strange amber color in the clear, vaguely gold light of the electric candle beside the sink.

Ibaki sighed, leaned over, and flicked on the light, illuminating the darkish room with clear white radiance.

She padded softly back down the hall, swinging into her room sluggishly and stalking over to the neatly organized closet.

It was so much easier to pretend to be alright when she was wearing normal clothes and her hair was brushed into neat waves as opposed to pajamas and a lovely ginger rats nest.

Ibaki swung her backpack over her shoulder, relishing the comforting feeling of the rough fabric cutting through her thin black jacket, the slosh of her water shifting as she swung on her backpack.

The night's storm had left everything green and grey, all of the colors intensified against the washed out, dove colored sky. Ibaki's hair caught in the light, hanging wind, lifting into a flaming curtain in the wind, before falling back across her shoulders.

The gravel shifting beneath her feet, scratching against itself and sinking deeper into the mud. Ibaki stopped, just for a mohernt, to take in the soft, watery, fresh scent of the rainy morning, breathing the humid, cold air in with one deep gasp. There were so many birds out this morning, called out by the freshness of the rainfall - robins, magpies, jays, sparrows, red-wing blackbirds, and crows - all calling out in a strange herdley of cawing and chirping.

"Whatcha looking at? We still gotta get to school."

"And you wanna see Tsuni. I know. Honestly. You are really freaking predictable."

"And you aren't?"

"Haha. Maybe. But we can all agree that I am less so than, well yeah."

"Humf. Well I'm just glad it's over. I thought you ... well... anyway. Yeah. That's over."

Ibaki glanced back at the sky, watching the grey clouds move slowly over on another. There were so many colors and layers, so much beyond simply grey. There were layers of cotton candy, others like flowing water, all sliding across the sky in slow motion.

She sighed and looked back down, suddenly finding the plain, grey brown mosaic of gravel to be almost as interesting as her black converse. It was over, all of it.

Wasn't it?

The brightly lit hall of the school, fraught with warmth and filling with the mingling colors of all of the students, wrapped her into itself, pulling her back into the world Ibaki had coher to take for granted.

Kyari raised one pale hand, waving lazily back and forth, the fuzzy, gunhertal blue aura around her arm catching her eyes long before she herself did.