Rain That Never Ends

It had been raining for five years.

Not a day, not an hour of silence from the sky. The people of Maravelle had long stopped waiting for the sun. The old roads were rivers now, and the hills were islands. Children learned to swim before they learned to walk. Markets floated on barrels and bamboo rafts, schools drifted in circles tethered to the remains of clock towers, and crops grew in hanging gardens on rooftops.

In this half-drowned town lived Arin, a boy of eleven, whose eyes were the color of storm clouds. He was born on the first night of rain and had never seen a dry day in his life.

People often said the rain had a will of its own. It fell harder when tempers rose, softer when hearts were kind. But Arin believed something else. He believed his mother controlled it and that the rain began the day she disappeared.

Arin’s mother, Lira, had been a storyteller, one of the last who remembered what the world was like before the endless rain. She used to tell him about the Dry Lands, where fields stretched golden, and rivers sparkled under a clear blue sky. She spoke of wind not the cold biting gusts of storms, but warm breezes that smelled of grass and earth.

But one morning, when Arin was six, Lira went out in a small wooden boat toward the edge of the flood and never came back. That same day, the rain turned from drizzle to downpour and never stopped.

The townsfolk whispered that she had angered the sky, that she had gone searching for the Source of the Rain a mythical place where water poured from the heavens like a curtain. Arin didn’t care about myths. He only knew that his mother was out there somewhere, and the rain was her voice calling him to follow.

Five years later, the boy decided to leave Maravelle.

He built his own raft from driftwood and plastic drums, tied with ropes scavenged from broken docks. Old Mr. Tomas, who ran the floating school, tried to stop him.

“Arin,” he said, “the waters stretch for miles. You’ll find nothing but storms.”

Arin looked up at the weeping sky. “Then I’ll find the storm she’s in.”

With a loaf of bread, a compass that didn’t work, and a bottle of his mother’s perfume the only thing that still smelled of her he pushed off into the grey unknown.

Days passed. The rain blurred the horizon into a sheet of silver. Sometimes Arin saw shadows beneath the waves drowned houses, lampposts, even the rusted top of a church bell. He slept in shifts, lulled by the rhythm of water hitting water.

On the seventh night, lightning tore open the sky, and Arin’s raft broke apart. He clung to the wreckage, shivering, whispering his mother’s name. The storm carried him to the ruins of a tall building that jutted from the flood like a crooked finger. Inside, he found candles and a woman’s voice singing softly.

Arin followed the voice to a narrow stairway that spiraled upward. And there, at the top, beneath a cracked glass dome, stood Lira.

She looked exactly as he remembered except her eyes glowed faintly blue, like moonlight through rain.

“Mother?” he gasped.

Lira smiled sadly. “You shouldn’t have come, my love. The rain listens to me now… but it never obeys.”

She told him the truth: years ago, when she sailed away, she had reached the Source of the Rain a place deep in the clouds where sorrow takes form as water. She had begged the sky to share its tears, to wash away human pain. But the sky misunderstood. It kept crying, endlessly. And now, she was bound to it, half human, half rain.

“Then stop it,” Arin pleaded. “Please, make it stop!”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “But you can.”

She placed her hand on his heart. “The rain falls because the world remembers its grief. You must teach it to remember hope again.”

When Arin woke, the woman was gone. The dome was empty, and sunlight faint, fragile sunlight shimmered through the clouds for the first time in five years.

The town of Maravelle woke to a drizzle that slowly thinned to mist. Children ran through the streets laughing. For the first time, roofs began to dry.

Arin stood on the rooftop farm, looking at the clearing sky. The rain had ended or perhaps, it had only paused to listen.

He smiled, whispering to the wind, “I found you, Mother.”

And somewhere in the clouds, a voice answered soft, warm, and full of light.