🌧️ The Rain That Never Touched the Groun

By: Sarfaraz

Chapter One: The First Freeze

Rain fell in Sarfaraz’s city like it always did — soft, silent, silver. But on the morning of the 5th of March, it stopped falling. Not in the way most rain stops, not gradually, not gently.

No. This rain froze mid-air.

He stepped outside and stared in disbelief. The raindrops hung inches above the ground — shimmering, perfectly still — like tiny glass pearls suspended by invisible strings. Cars drove past, people walked under umbrellas. No one noticed.

But Sarfaraz did.

He raised his hand slowly. The drop hovering above his palm didn’t move. It stayed there, cool and humming with something strange. Magic? Memory? He didn’t know yet.

It had happened before. Always in this same narrow street, always when he was alone. For years he thought it was just his imagination. But this time, it lasted longer.

Long enough for someone else to see it too.

Chapter Two: Halima in the Rain

He first saw her in the reflection of a shop window.

A girl. Standing beneath the frozen rain, untouched by it. Her eyes wide, her hand out, brushing the still droplets as if she had stepped into someone else’s dream. She didn’t carry an umbrella. She didn’t flinch. She just walked among the hovering rain like she belonged there.

Sarfaraz turned, heart pounding.

“Do you see it too?” he asked.

She looked at him, and something in her face shifted — recognition, maybe fear, or maybe the kind of sadness that comes with remembering something important too late.

“You see it too,” she whispered back.

Her name was Halima.

She said the rain started freezing for her two days ago, but in another part of the city. She had followed it. Followed the stillness. It led her here.

To him.

Chapter Three: Memories in the Water

Together, they began to test it.

They threw stones — the droplets shimmered but didn’t move.

They spoke inside the still rain — their voices echoed softer, slower.

Then, Sarfaraz did something he never had before.

He touched one of the drops… and the world changed.

In that moment, he saw something — a memory, not his own. A blurry image of a girl in a red dress standing in that exact spot, crying in the rain. The memory dissolved in seconds, but it left behind a shiver in his bones.

Halima had seen it too.

“I think the rain is holding memories,” she said. “Memories no one wants to remember.”

But whose?

Chapter Four: The Truth Underneath

They kept returning.

Every time the rain froze, they walked together. Each time, a new memory would surface — some beautiful, some painful.

A child running. A man screaming. A woman letting go of a letter.

And finally: Halima, standing in the rain, holding a boy’s hand.

Sarfaraz.

But he didn’t remember it.

“We knew each other,” she said. “A long time ago.”

A flash of a hospital. A car crash. A promise. Her tear-streaked face.

“You forgot me,” she said quietly, “but the rain didn’t.”

Chapter Five: Letting Go

The rain began to fall normally again, drop by drop.

The freezing stopped.

The memories faded.

Halima told him she had to go — wherever the rain came from, wherever the forgotten live, she was being pulled back into it.

But this time, Sarfaraz remembered.

He remembered everything.

He reached for her hand, just as the last frozen droplet dissolved between them.

She smiled.

And then she was gone.

Epilogue: The Rain Still Falls

Now when it rains, Sarfaraz walks without an umbrella.

And sometimes, when no one’s looking, the drops still freeze.

Just for a moment.

Just for him.

📘 Story Info:

• Genre: Magical Realism / Lost Love

• Main Characters:

• Sarfaraz — quiet, curious, haunted by a memory he doesn’t know he lost

• Halima — mysterious, graceful, a