Sta.sh
The air is thick with the promise of rain, but she hardly notices. Hers is a brisk rush through the darkening world, hands full, sneakers kicking up bits of grass in her wake. A breeze runs its ethereal fingers through her hair. It tickles under the collar of her jacket—that's the first thing she really feels.
Clouds lower overhead like great gray wings on a downstroke. She's never noticed the scent of cloud before, but she can smell it now, carried by the breeze. The dense layer of shifting black and gray above says hush, and the whole world listens. Birds become still and small. Dogs blink up at the sky, scenting the rain, and even the pond fish glide very softly up to the surface of the water, waiting to feel the first cool drops on their backs.
A reverberating growl of thunder stops her in her tracks. It rolls and crashes into its own echoes, rumbling through her very core. Her face tilts up and the first drop of rain tumbles through the atmosphere at a dizzying speed, then hits her forehead with an infinitesimal sigh of relief.
The heavens open up. Rain pours down in cool torrents and the birds preen themselves beneath sheltering clusters of leaves. Canine gray and blue and amber eyes close. The fish leap into the air just because they can, just to feel the connection between water and sky. Her world melts away, chains dissolved, gravity slipping out from beneath her.
Her book hits the ground, the pages shrinking away from the droplets that hang like diamonds on the grassblades. Her jacket follows, becoming just another nondescript lump in a world of shifting contours. Her hair, painstakingly done up, tumbles down around her, and the rain rolls in rivulets down each lock.
For that brief second she stands there, soaked, vulnerable, a meaningless speck under the weight of the vast cosmos—finally alive.
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If I may offer a small point: While I agree with your statement that a brief second is "really all we ever get, if we're lucky," it's a commentary and snaps me out of the reverie I'm in from your description of the moment. I think you made us feel the importance of the moment already without telling us outright.
Yeah, you're completely right. This was back when I thought literature = moralizing.
I try not to moralize, because I don't think my ideals are necessarily any better than anyone else's...
Spruced it up a bit, by the way, and I think it's an improvement.
I see what you mean about the first-person... this whole thing needs a lot of work, to be honest... maybe someday I'll go back and rewrite all my old stories, make them better.