The Last Rainfall
A story about the night it rained for the very last time on Earth
A hundred million years came and went like a shooting star streaking across the sky.
The unyielding universe, vast and indifferent, proved ultimately impregnable. Humanity’s passionate flame dwindled to its last inch of wax and wick and sputtered out with a whimper.
One fateful night, in a world locked in eternal summer, a tremendous downpour coated the world, for the last time, in reflective surfaces and mute shades of blue.
Little puddles formed everywhere and on those puddles, a hundred thousand ripples shimmered into being and vanished again like stars. Each puddle was a portal to a mirror world suspended in the sky and gazing down on all the Earth—the sacred view of the gods, solemn and silent, from their heavenly terrace.
An arc of lightning ripped violently across the night and bathed the world in momentary radiance, a fluorescent midnight sun disappearing an instant later, leaving a ghostly afterimage as its only memory.
A cacophonous roar of thunder crackled and reverberated, and the world fell into an awed hush, reverent before a sky torn asunder by the death throes of creation.
Petrichor wafted up like tears shed by grieving soils. The primitive scent carried the faint echo of Nature’s ageless dominion, drifting over great concrete edifices split by ancient roots, Ozymandias buried in the abyssal depths of an ocean primordial once more, and verdant green creeping over derelict grey.
Winds laced with the scent whispered of what had been countless eons ago and what would be once more for countless eons afterwards. They taunted—humanity had been but a flickering ember; the long night awaited.
As the torrent receded before the dawn, somewhere in a rock gorge the restless wind rushed through narrow stone passageways and whistled, mimicking birdsong. It was a haunting, lilting eulogy that wandered over soaked earth and sunken nations.
And in the last morning of its kind, a resplendent sunrise came to rest upon a horizon wreathed in pastel pink and purple, a tender gradient that tried vainly to hold the fleeting night and ardent day. Puffy clouds, having wept through the lonely night, lingered ethereally in the pale morning light, holding silent vigil for the last rainfall of Earth.
