Birth

Birth (unfinished)

(Attack of the writer with insomnia 1)

The first thing she remembered was the Rain. A steady, wet rustle of the warm drops as it whispered into the long strands of grass. They moved in the gentle breeze, tickling her face with slender, dripping stalks. The ground was soft, mushy in the rainfall, with the spiderwebbing roots of the grasses making a scratchy bed against her bare skin. The air was humid, musty, but the soft movement of air made it bearable, even pleasant. Yet it was dark. Why?

Silly. You haven’t opened your eyes.

The world came into view, unfocused for a split second and visible only as a grey, bright blur of sky, which sharpened into the soft, moving images of clouds floating their way along the river of the air. The Rain fell in a delightful shower of droplets, trickling down her upturned face, leaving little paths of wetness as gravity pulled them towards the already drenched earth. The grass was adorned in the finest little diamond raindrops the sky could bestow, each round and silvery as a pearl, but more valuable, more fleeting. She shifted, flexing, testing. She realized she was laying on her back in a puddle of grass and water, halfway submerged. She brought hands up to her face to inspect them as if she had never seen them before. A trail of crystal water followed the motion in a delicate curve, a sculpture of beauty, reflecting the grey light and the green of the grass in an instant before it fell with a swish back to the water.

She marveled at this, but soon was distracted with her own appendages. Five fingers on each hand. She opened and closed them, enjoying the movement. Skin wet and shining, the color of the beautiful grey sky, tinged with the brown of the soil and the green of the gently moving grass. She stared at them, smiling, blinking with large, grey eyes. And still the Rain fell. The wonderful, wonderful Rain.

She sat up, water trickling down her body in a wet, cheerful chatter, falling with a musical “plink plink” back into the puddle. She laughed with the water, enchanted. Throwing her head back, she stuck out a pale blue tongue, tasting the drops of Rain as they splashed downwards. Warm and sweet, natural.

So good! Get up! Get up and see where you are!

Excitedly, she jumped to her feet, stretching her arms upward in welcome, but toppled over, giggling, on unsteady legs. She rolled over, pushing up with her arms, bringing her slender legs under herself. Now she could see the landscape around her: rolling hills of long, emerald grass, waving in silvery paths in the Rain and the wind. She glanced down at her feet, scrunching her toes, feeling the squirt of the water and the earth through them. She laughed, ecstatic at the moist sensation. Her hair, as pale blue as her tongue and frizzy and curly in the humid wetness, clung to her face and the back of her neck. She pushed it out of her eyes and gazed in wonder at the Rain and the hills, and how the breeze moved the drops and raced through the fields. It made her want to race with it.

She began to run.

Unsteady at first, tripping often in the knee-high grass, tumbling head over heels as she rolled, giggling, down the hill. She landed in a laughing, wet heap at the bottom. Looking behind her, she saw a path of crushed grass marking her careening passage down. She stood again, legs a bit steadier, and ran once more.

Her bare feet rustled in the whispering, drenched grass, each footstep lighter than the breeze except when a really satisfying splash came from a puddle. The Rain seemed to laugh with her, singing musically in a constant trickling from the sky above.

Faster!

         She raced up the next green hill, feeling the drops of the rain on her shoulders, the bounce and tug of her hair as it was soaked in the shower. Her footsteps grew quicker, bounding, leaping, dancing. She spun, and the Rain spun with her, swirling around her in a lovely spray of liquid diamonds.

Faster! Faster!

         She sped to the crest of the hill, the ache of the breath in her lungs a wonderful new sensation. When she reached the top, she could see the rolling grasslands spread beneath her, and at the bottom of this hill, a little stream ran gurgling over smooth stones. The vast expanse of sky blanketed all in soft clouds.

         She stretched her silvery grey arms into the sky, feeling the Rain on her palms. Feeling a tug on her back, she glanced over her shoulder. Droplets were forming, seemingly floating, sticking to nothing but air. She stared, her neck craned backwards, curious. The water drops meshed together, forming sheets of lovely clear water, beautiful and fine as glass. She shouted with joy.

Wings.

         The Rain had gifted her with wings, delicate as a dragonfly’s, crystalline and dripping. She shifted them, cascading water with the movement.