It was a good thing when it rained, wasn’t it?
The flowers would drink in the replenishing, sweet taste of the long sought-after, falling drops. The clouds would relieve themselves of the budding pressure weighing them down. The forests would come together in a dancing band as claps would echo for each downpour, roaring in thunderous applause.
It was a good thing, right? Then, why did the sapling fear it, dread it?
It cowered as the inevitable came trickling down, gently, creeping up its veins. Its branches folded in like a tulip hiding away before dusk. It wept with even more passion than before.
Was it that the rain meant the sapling was forever going to be growing away from its forest? No, it wasn’t that. The sapling had accepted that—dismally but accepting nonetheless.
Was it that the rain’s coming was written in the telling stars? No, it wasn’t that. The sapling had always known of it too. The winds even whispered it lovingly every so often.
Was it that the sapling had always hoped and written in its own stars that something other than the rain would come, something bigger, something better? Yes, it was for this that the sapling wept.
The rain’s coming was meant to happen. But what about things that weren’t always etched across the starry nights, bound to one day awaken with the sun? Other than the known rain splattering on the sapling’s deflated leaves, the sky above was as still and as dull as always. The trees around rejoiced for their rain, but the sapling stood still, quiet.
It was a good thing when it rained, wasn’t it? they asked the sapling. Yes, of course, the stubborn sapling lied.
What could possibly be better? they challenged. Of course, other than a happy sun or a spectacle in the night—a flying star, perhaps.
It was a good thing when it rained, wasn’t it? they asked the sapling. Yes, of course, the stubborn sapling lied.
Yes, all of that, dreamed the sapling. Even more than that.
So, as the rain fell that night, the sapling escaped to dreams of a blazing, colorful sky, a bursting, exhilarating moment, a wondrous life. But, the sapling kept waking in the night, in sharp jolts, fretful and restless, cold sap sticking to its pores. After the fourth frightful succession, the sapling braved the rest of the night sleeplessly.
It figured there were racing comets or dancing northern lights that would find it that night or the next night. The sapling shrank, its green fading, its branches folding as the thought passed. So, instead, it thought, it was a good thing when it rained. It is a good thing when it rains. Right.
And when dawn hit the coming morning, above the sad sapling, the rain had calmed, and a haze of colors from red to purple formed a faint arch, an artful display that sapling never read of in the stars, a sort of wondrous spectacle it was, a good thing that happened when it rained and only because of the rain.
