Sometimes when it rains, you get wet. 

Sometimes, when the water flowed up from the banks and pushed past forests and bushes and little flowers. Sometimes, when it seemed there was no place for shelter. Sometimes, when she found a place between rocks and did her best to hug herself into a smaller version of the same person.

Out there she’d heard a noise. She went searching to find it. She went deep into a place she didn’t know. She went further than she knew where to stop. Each time, she looked back expecting to see something on the path. Each time, she stepped a bit faster. Put her head back forward, back ahead of her. She kept walking.

It started to rain. And in this downpour, there was no shelter. There was a tree and two jagged rocks. It wasn’t much. It certainly didn’t shield her from the elements. She began to shiver. 

The shivering wasn’t so bad. Neither were the raindrops. It’s just when it got to be so that she couldn’t feel anything else. 

Looking through the mist, the sweeping fog, over the landscape there seemed to be something – a small light probably far off from where she was. Was it worth it to risk it?

She hopped out from the rocks and the tree jumping over puddles. Tracing footsteps over fallen logs. Upward, downward, around bends. Avoiding getting stuck in mud as she walked. The earth suctioning her feet into itself. 

A cabin. A small house in this wood. There it was and she could see that it was here that a light was coming from. Seemed familiar, like a place she’d been to before. Closer and closer. 

please get closer…

Footsteps like a prayer. Like pleading. Like some sort of mantra repeated over and over as she stepped and stepped. Her hands were cold. Her teeth chattered uncomfortably. 

As she neared the place, she wondered if anyone was there, then decided she didn’t care. She knocked on the door, but it opened to an empty room with a single light shining in the window. 

She took a couple tentative steps inside and then realizing she was staring straight at a bed, her knees gave out. She’d have to crawl the rest of the way. Pulling herself up and into this bed. 

Whispering voices floating through her head. Thoughts that she tried not to hear. Words that made her squeeze her eyes shut as if to resist crying. But it didn’t matter, sometimes tears came anyway. Sometimes she didn’t know what had hurt her. Sometimes, it just was. And it was okay because the rain no longer hit her. She began to feel warmth again. She closed her eyes and turned her head to the pillow and as she breathed a sigh of relief, there was a tightness in her throat. She fell into deep sleep. Water sinking down into the bed from her hair, her shoulders, her back.

Outside, water dripping down to a beat like the music in her mind. 

…