Warm Hard Rain

It was raining outside, raining hard. Raining warm, hard rain. The kind of rain that bounces off the tarmac in large disk-shaped splatters.

There was a man standing at his window, watching the spectacle of God's teardrops as they gave life back to the Earth. He watched in soft, secret silence, but, if prompted, he would have said that one of his favorite things in the world was warm, hard rain.

"What, you don't like the rain?" the man said, still staring out of his bedroom window. He was talking to his wife, who was standing behind him. He knew it was his wife because there was no one else in their home (well, at least there wasn't supposed to be) and because when she was disturbed by something she made this funny little "harrumph" sound, almost below her breath, but he could hear it every time; just as he heard it now.

"Harrumph," from behind him again, and then an accompanying sigh. "What," he started again, hoping to draw her out of her dark reverie, "you don't like the rain?" This time he turned towards the sound of the "harrumph" noise, he supposed you could even refer to his wife as a "harrumpher", if you were so inclined.

He had never been so inclined, however.

The man's wife, his companion and mate, made a disgusted face and said most certainly not. "I hate the rain," she said. And then, almost as an afterthought: "What do you like about it?"

"Many things," her husband began, her companion and mate. He stood at the window a still silhouette, a husband whose cheeks glowed with a sunshine fire, as if he stood beneath the blazing light of Earth's sustaining star, and not the gun-metal sky afforded by these clouds and rain.

"It gives us life," he said, still staring and glowing from behind the window. "And it's wet, and moist, and you can play in it."

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