A Song of Rain

Revenir Short Story | Music and art in grief

Hello and welcome to the Fiction Section of Notes from the Town Hermit. I write literary and slipstream fiction and fantasy focusing on themes of identity and what it means to be human through a lyrical and poetic writing style. Subscribe for free to enjoy more stories.

You are reading a standalone story from Revenir, an anthology exploring the human experience and delving deep into themes of love, loss, and the search for meaning. Written in a haunting, lyrical style and set in a single fantasy world, this collection is for readers looking for character-driven stories with strong emotional resonance.

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I wanted to write a song about the rain, but all I could think of was her last November. On that day, the rain poured down, mimicking our laughter as we sprinted along the cobblestone streets. By nightfall, the heavens had reclaimed every cloud, yet the pavement glistened like glass beneath the radiant glow of the trees lining our cherished field.

She took my hand as the sun sank behind the hills, her fingers cold yet reassuring in mine. The moist air carried the fragrance of summer evenings, a fragrance that forever reminded me of our initial encounter at a bustling summer carnival.

The scent of roasted chicken thighs mingled with the sweat of bodies pressed together. The expansive heat was oppressive, closing in on you like tight spaces. I saw her twirling with her fingers stretched to the night sky as fireworks snapped and crackled, illuminating the black with bright shades of red, orange, and white. She looked like magic to my eyes from my seat on the grass.

Her eyes were closed to the world as she spun round, as though it was too much to take in even then.

I sprung up and pulled her back from colliding into a passing group of children. Only then did she open her eyes and I read in them a depth of passion and voiceless sorrow simmering beneath quiet pools before she emptied them.

Such was our dance for years to come, a drawing near and pulling away I was unable to grasp.

It has been five hundred and seventy-six days since she left.

Each day, the void grows wider, resonating only in a chamber of memories. The droplets had shimmered in her hair under starlight as she danced alone to music only she could hear, moving with a grace transcending the bounds of an ordinary world.

I wonder now if she had always danced that way, in her own private universe, and I had failed to notice. I wonder if that was the reason she chose to leave.

Some memories hurt, cutting through the fog of my days. Like a day in September when the sky tore itself apart, its tears mingling with mine, as I searched for words to stitch together the growing chasm between us. And another day yet earlier, when she cupped my hand in hers, her eyes searching mine as she traced with my fingers the pain she had written upon her skin. I held her then as I held her many times after, as though my arms alone possessed the power to anchor her drifting soul.

“Why?”

“Because I do not know if I am alive.” Her body stiffened along with mine, and she drew herself from my grasp once more.

I held onto her wrist; my fingers brushed against the ridged surface, once smooth. “So you carve these lines across your skin? To what? Prove you bleed like the rest of us?”

She wrenched her arm away and held it with the other as if I’d burned her. “You are not listening.”

Was I not?

Other memories are softer, draped in the gentle hues of happier times. Like when she sang a song I wrote one winter, her voice a clear ringing that danced in the frosty air. We were at the height of our love affair then, enveloped in a cocoon of shared dreams and whispered promises. I marveled then that she could be mine, this girl who smelled of summer breeze drifting through leaves and freshly brewed tea, this girl whose touch left remnants of starlight upon my skin.

In those days, our small cottage overflowed with the clutter of our creative endeavors—she painted canvases in wild bursts of inspiration, while pages of my unfinished songs lay scattered about. I once stepped over wayward paintbrushes and crumpled sheets of lyrics, each step a journey through a museum of our shared dreams.

“You have paint in your hair,” I said, brushing it from her face and rubbing the tendrils between my fingers.

“And you have ink on your nose.” She laughed, and warmth filled me as I scooped her up and lost my balance, knocking the paint onto her work as we tumbled to the floor.

I followed the splatter pattern and turned to her in horror.

“I think it's much improved, actually.” She ran a finger across my cheek, leaving a streak of red. “And so are you.”

She laughed once more. I hoped I could listen to that laugh for the rest of my life.

I did not yet know the sorrow she masked with smiles and laughter.

Our love, too, was a canvas, painted in strokes of passion and pain, a masterpiece of complexities. But like any piece of art, it was subject to interpretation, and while I saw a future, she saw only chains.

“Someday I could compose a song tracing the strokes of your painting, and thus thread our hearts together,” I murmured into her ear.

But she did not answer.

Now, my tea has cooled. I only drink it to hold on to a fragment of her—Earl Grey with a splash of milk, the way she took it. Outside, the rain has stopped, and my fingers hover over a blank page. The melodies in my head pivot and flee like elusive ghosts. Yesterday, someone asked me how songwriting was going. How long had it been since I spoke to another human? I could think only of her, in every corner of this now too-quiet cottage, her silhouette etched against the window, bathed in sunbeams that seemed to understand she belonged to another world.

The question drove me to sit before those black and white keys again, but the silence of truncated melodies taunted me in scattered sheets on the floor around me. Hours had passed but only stray notes remained until all I could do was smash my hands against the keys in a cacophony of anguish, yet those seconds may have held more truth than any efforts in those crumbled pages.

She lived her life in a dance with shadows, measuring out her days in multiples of nightshade petals. And I, left behind, now tally marks of bereft melodies on this silent piano. How many more beats must I endure before I can cross the veil to find her? Would I find her waiting, or lost in her dance among the stars?

It has been five hundred and seventy-six days since she died, and still I wish I had danced. I wish I had joined her under that starlit sky, moving to the rhythm of her world. Maybe then, I would have understood the silent song in her heart, the one she danced to alone.

Nights stretch into eternity. Stray notes float and clang against each other within my skull, pushing sleep to the edges until at last I surrender any notion of rest.

In a corner where I left piles of her belongings yet untouched, I pulled paint-covered sheets from old perfume bottles, baskets of paintbrushes, pushing them aside until I found the stack of paintings she’d left behind.

The one I sought was small enough to hold with one hand, yet it was the one I wanted: two tiny figures dancing beneath starlight.

I stray to the piano with the painting and place it on the stand in front of me. My fingers falter and hesitate before finding new yet familiar chords. In the dim candlelight, the first strains take shape and weave together the stray threads of a song.

Perhaps it’s not too late to learn the steps. Perhaps in the notes of the song I'm struggling to write, I’ll find her again—not as a memory, but as a muse, guiding my fingers across the keys. In music, I might discover solace, a means to connect the divide between our worlds.

I write, not about the rain, but about her—my love, the girl who carried the fragrance of summer yet belonged to winter.

I write; the song becomes mine—a path forward, a dance of healing, of hope amidst echoes of what was.

As I delve into the composition, each note becomes a vessel for unspoken words and unshed tears.

The hours pass unnoticed as I play and rewrite, pouring my heart into every chord. I’m no longer just a grieving lover; I’m a storyteller, chronicling our journey together, immortalizing it in music. This song is my ode to her, a testament to my heart, shades of melancholy woven through a love branded upon my heart.

As dawn spreads its lighted wings through the window, I set down my quill, the song complete.

I whisper to the air, “Would you have danced to this?”

My fingers flit over the keys, bringing to life our story of joy and sorrow. Yet no sweet presence emerges to share in my accomplishment, only her specter haunting each note. The song lingers in the air, a reminder of past lives and a future reshaped into one I did not want but must endure.

Perhaps I will write a song about the rain one day. But this one? This is mine.

It has been five hundred and seventy-six days since she died, but today, at least, I choose to dance.