Ameagari by Violetcarson

Ameagari

A/N: Ameagari (ah-may-ah-ga-ree) is a Japanese term meaning "after the rain." This was originally written for a contest, but I expended slightly on the idea, and this was the result. Happy reading!!!

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It rained a lot where she was from. She remembered how barely a day had gone by when the gentle pattering of rain and the occasional crash of thunder wasn't always hovering in the background of her life. It seemed now that her early life had been built around, based upon, and derived from this constant element. At least, that's the way she remembered it now. She neglected to remember how she had often become tired of the damp weather as a child.

Now, as she reclined in her very comfy pseudo-leather armchair, in the middle of her comfortably air-conditioned home somewhere in downtown Phoenix, she wished for the rain she had known as a child. When was the last time she had stood soaked to the bone in a deluge of cold spring rain? When was the last time she had had to sit in darkness with only a candle as light for hours on end, the power knocked out by a raging storm? When was the last time she had been able to go outside on a summer day and not feel sweat trickling sickeningly down the back of her neck? What on God's green earth had possessed her to move to Arizona?

Oh yes, it had been because she had wanted to try something different than what she knew. She wanted a different setting. Well, that's definitely what she got, living in Phoenix. Something totally different, and not pleasantly so. Now she knew how stupid that had been. It was utterly pointless, to have abandoned what she had back home, an house she knew and loved, the memory of an Aunt and Uncle who had taken her in when her parents died, the best group of friends you could ever have, the most wonderful and beautiful boyfriend a girl could ask for, and a great job. All gone now, just because she had wanted a change in scenery. And the rain was gone too. Oh, how she missed the rain.

Suddenly, she sat up, dark hair swinging. Her usually bright blue eyes were now clouded over with a look of preoccupation. In a trance-like state, she lowered the footstool on her recliner, and stood up. Her unseeing gaze traveled over the blue walls of her living room, resting briefly on the two pictures hung above her mantle. In one frame, her Aunt and Uncle stood, smiling happily in that way of theirs, arms wrapped around each other and a blue-eyed child held in her Aunt's strong embrace. In the other, an oil painting by her Aunt, a rainbow hovered in the clouds, shining brightly above the mountainous landscape below. She stared, enthralled, for a moment, before abruptly snatching both pictures down and walking with them out of the door. She took only the pictures, her purse, and her keys. She didn't even turn off the air conditioner.

After many long hours on the road in her little blue car, she stood at the top of a tall hill, looking down across a flat expanse of grass, dotted with tall stones. She went down the hill slowly, following a weaving path among the stones. Eventually she stood before a huge white slab. Engraved upon was a single name. She didn't look at the name, as she knew it almost as well as she knew her own. Very calmly she took a single yellow rose from behind her back, where it had been hiding since she plucked it from its place on a bush near the top of the hill, and set it gently on top of the stone. Then she turned to a larger stone, almost directly behind the first. On it, were two names, written side by side, connected by an inter-locking vine. Against this stone, she leaned the two pictures, the frames facing the outside world, the image facing the stone. She sat between the two stones, which represented all that mattered to her in world, for a few minutes more. Pr maybe she was there, a motionless testimony to time, for a lifetime, 100 lifetimes over. She didn't know. Then abruptly, she stood up. She turned calmly away from the second stone, and brushed her hands lightly over the first as she passed, but her eyes remained dry, and she didn't look back, not even when she had reached her car, and drove off down the road.

She still didn't look back, as the day darkened, and she failed to turn on her headlights. She didn't look back, even as her car spun out of her control, and she was thrown from the front seat through the windshield. And she didn't look back, but looked up, as the life fled her body, there in the middle of the road. She looked up, and smiled softly as she heard a dark rumbling, and to her it seemed almost like her first and last love's voice, calling her name, and she sighed her last breath as a single drop of rain splashed onto her cheek. Oh, how she had missed the rain.