The scent of the rain has been the solemn blanket to my senses for too many years. It began when I was only a young boy in the village of Rukyo. I remember laying on my mothers lap, looking out at our garden where my father was pruning the tomato tree. Her cotton robe was warm, and as she gently brushed my hair I turned to look up at her. She was not looking down at me, but was watching her husband, my father, go about his duty. She had this look in her eyes, this vague, blank, stare. Yet it was not demeaning or sad, it was the look of bored contentment. As she looked out at her husband, the far off mountain roared.
“Rain.” Was all she said, not to her husband, not to me, maybe not even to herself. It was more like she was speaking to the distant mountains as they made ready their tears. Her mouth moved into the shape of a smile, for rain has always been a good tiding in Rukyo. Though her lips pursed ever so slightly I could not imagine, looking back on it, that it was a happy smile. It bore the same, unknowable feeling as it had before, only now it had changed to appear happy. Some would say that such a smile, feigning joy, would then be sad, but still my childish head sank in her lap, under her hand, and atop her cotton robe.
It was such a warm scene, having been in the middle of spring. As soon as my eyes closed upon the underside of her beautifully peaceful mouth, she looked down at me, her darling son. When I opened them she was in my lap, looking up at me with those same, miraculous, eyes. Her head weighed into my lap, the silk robe of my father covering my legs. She did not speak a word to me, but those slightly pursed, yet ragged, lips wore upon them the same smile I saw that day, then thirty years gone. She was not happy, she was not sad, and though my relatives and sisters all cried so dearly at the expression I knew better. I did not cry.The veranda was open, the same as it was that day, and outside the tomato was ripe. Her head turned wearily toward the painting of the open door, and the smile fell away as a tomato descended to the earth. Falling to pieces to lay its seeds for future generations. Such was how her new stare looked to me, and I found, almost unconsciously, that it had taken its home upon my lips as well. I followed her contented eyes, and rested mine upon the stone beneath the tomato tree. Letters carved upon it when the earth before was made fresh. The grass had not yet covered his grave, so it had attracted her eyes and my own.
As she looked out at her husband, the far off mountain roared.
“Rain,” was all her frail voice could whisper. Though her dull and lifeless expression portrayed what some may think to be sadness, I knew better. For rain has always been a good tiding in Rukyo. I looked down at her as her head came back to look up at me, and I saw the same woman I knew from that day some thirty years before. I saw not the smile, not the word, but the smooth skin and dark hair of my mother. Then, as those eyes of hers closed and her head sank deeper into the warm embrace of my lap, I began to weep. As the far off mountain made ready its spring tears, I left behind an empty room.
TJ Daly is an independent student of literature from the Bay Area in California. He works heavily off of his literary influences ranging from B. & A. Strugatsky, Tsushima Shuji, and Robert Heinlein, but hopes to develop his own creative style through practice and fun.