The Day the Rain Stopped

The town of Greyhollow had always lived under rain. Day and night, the water fell soft and grey on the roofs, on the streets, on the river that ran fat and brown through the middle of everything. The people of Greyhollow did not remember a dry morning. The old ones said there had never been one. Rain was the weather. Rain was the world.

Mara, the town librarian, wrote the weather in her notebook every morning before work. "Rain," she wrote on Monday. "Rain," she wrote on Tuesday. The word filled page after page, year after year. She liked the small task. It made the days feel ordered, like books on a shelf.

But on this morning, something was wrong.