Caught in Rain

I.

I sit on the bench in Clarita Plaza, wondering how much longer it's going to take for the rain to completely fill my bucket. It's about halfway full right now, and I've been sitting here for an hour. So I guess the answer is another hour. As long as it keeps raining, and keeps coming down at the same rate. But I think it will, the weather alert said it would rain from five to eight, and the Municipality is usually good at keeping things on schedule. I would make it go faster if I could, but none of my rain settings are working right now. I have to settle for the leisurely Default pace the city has designated, which is much slower than natural rain, closer to the speed of falling snow. I have heard this was intentional, because people complained that it fell too fast for them to really appreciate the way it looked. I'm fine with it under normal circumstances - it makes the rainfall look slow and shimmery and pretty. I just wish it wouldn't take all day to fill up a little bucket.

Clarita Plaza is one of the smaller Plazas in the Joy Range. I didn't have to come all the way here, but I wanted to get out of the house. There's a fountain in the center, and it's tiled with cobblestones with a calming brown Default (the Palettes available for this area are very bright and ugly, so I usually don't use them.) There are a few benches, a few shrubs, and even fewer people. It's surrounded by buildings on each side, nice and private. I leave the buildings on their Defaults as well. Otherwise, with the rain coming down, and everything so brightly tinted and garish, I just feel like I'm at somebody's ruined birthday party.

I'm trying my best not to be so negative all the time. I get that it can be annoying and off-putting. But when you don't have anyone to complain to, all those complaints get bottled up in your head and make all your normal thoughts corrosive. It's an easy trap to fall into. But really everything is fine. The rain is pretty. I'm saving up my money, little by little. And this isn't hard work. The hard part is what Nana does - or rather, it's learning the skills to do what she does. She's training me to do the main work that she does, so that she doesn't have to do it all herself someday. But it's going to be a lengthy process, and my progress feels especially slow. Until I'm more skilled I'll be stuck doing bucket runs. Which isn't so bad, as long as my Card is working right. It's been frozen again for the past few weeks, but fortunately my weather settings were already on dry, so that's a relief. I actually almost never allow the rain to make me wet. Some people like that for the authenticity but I don't care about that.

I remember once when I was a little kid, I got caught out in the rain one afternoon. I had gone out to play an adventure course by myself. When I got out I saw that it was cloudy, but I wanted to see the big fountain garden at Plana Plaza, and I thought I would have more time. I saw the rain shrouds go down over the buildings, but it was my last free weekend before I had to go back to school, and I loved that garden. To young me it was a huge, inviting maze of water, flowers, and concrete. I still like it, but it seems much smaller now.

That was one of the last years of real rain. I remember seeing big machines working on parts of the weathernet high in the sky, like giant gray and yellow birds. I didn't even make it to Plana before I felt the first drops. I turned back, realizing my mistake, but it was too late, in moments it was pouring. I tried to run back home, but there was no point, I was too far away. I was soaked in minutes, so I slowed down to a trot, walking down the deserted street to the rhythm of my squelching shoes. I remember the feeling of my hair being plastered to my face, and the glare of lights in the watery haze. Nowadays rain drops don't splatter like that - they twinkle a little when they strike something, but it's barely noticeable. When the rain used to splash, it would get everywhere, obscure everything. It wasn't just a decoration, it was a presence.

That was the last time in my life I ever got caught out in the rain, and I don't think I'll ever experience that again unless I choose to allow it in my settings, for whatever reason I would do that. I'll never forget the cold I had for the next week, either. I don't think I've ever been that sick.