Before the dawn light, though every keyhole and wall crack, came the raging tide. Rain was not rain, yet Poseidon’s fists. Rain was not rain, yet cannonballs. How it hammered down as if our town reduced to splinters was not enough. No suffering, abject or deepest misery, was enough. Swim or drown. Cling or be washed away. Of mercy, there was none. And so, before the first struggling rays came cloud filtered, all but the very strongest had perished.
Let the flood come, for then we rebuild. We will build better, stronger and the journey of it will bond as together as kin.
When the graphite clouds come to sketch the world anew, to carve it with strong waters, the time of flooding had come.
The flood was scary every time, yet this curse, as ever, was also the blessing our future would depend upon.
Come floods, come rain, come water of heaven's grace, come bring the soils of river bed into the fields, come feed the harvest before seed is sown.
This is the flood we depend on to bring the rich soils, to feed the harvest in the season to come.
The flood washed away that old world while we watched from rooftops, our feet higher than even our heads once were. We watched the water carry away things we once held dear, never realising what they cost us. Yet at my shoulder, for the first time in so long, was someone I truly loved and loved me back. So I didn't care about that rain-given river that swept through my town, I actually felt better than I ever remembered feeling before.
Amy watched the flood carry away an upturned umbrella, swirling in the eddies, moving haphazardly over the surface. She wondered if after it had passed the street would be washed clean, if the sidewalks would be a pale silver instead of the usual sombre graphite.