Whispers from the Rain

It began on the third day of rain.

Not the drizzle kind, or even a thunderstorm—this was something older. The sky broke open, and the rain fell like a river turned upside down. No wind. No lightning. Just endless sheets of silver soaking the earth.

And with it… came the whispers.

At first, they were just murmurs. Barely audible, like forgotten songs behind windowpanes. But on the third day, Arlen heard his name.

Whispered clearly. Softly. From nowhere.

From everywhere.

Arlen was used to being alone.

After his mother died, the town of Durnwick faded from color. The house became too quiet. Too large. People stopped calling. He spoke less. Smiled never. The rain was the only thing that matched how heavy his heart felt.

But now it was speaking back.

He sat on the porch, his coat soaked through, watching the puddles ripple like voices trapped beneath glass. And there it was again:

“Arlen…”

“Do you remember?”

“The tree… the promise…”

He stood slowly. The voice wasn’t just in the rain.

It was in him.

By the fifth day, the whole town was whispering—if not aloud, then with their eyes. People flinched when water touched them. Children cried at night from dreams they couldn’t explain. The mayor declared it a “weather anomaly.”

But Arlen knew better.

The rain was not natural. It wasn’t falling from the clouds.

It was falling from memory.

Arlen followed the voice.

Through the flooded streets. Past the twisted iron gate of the abandoned greenhouse. Into the woods behind the old schoolyard—where no one had gone since the accident.

He stepped into the clearing, and stopped.

There, beneath a weeping tree, was a stone barely visible through the grass. And though the rain hadn’t let up in days, the ground around it was dry.

The stone read:

“Eira Valen. Lost, but never forgotten.”

His breath caught.

A name from another life.

A name buried like a secret.

Eira.

The girl with sky-colored eyes and rain in her laughter. She was his best friend. His first love. The one who vanished in that forest when they were only twelve. Everyone believed she drowned in the river during a storm.

But Arlen had always doubted that.

He remembered her last words, standing right under this tree:

“If the rain ever remembers us, come back. I’ll be waiting.”

He reached toward the stone.

The moment his fingers brushed it, the world shifted.

The rain froze in the air—droplets suspended like stars. The sky turned pale and quiet, and from the suspended drops, voices echoed like trapped memories.

Each drop was a whisper from the past.

He stepped between them.

And they spoke.

“You promised you wouldn’t forget…”

“We used to climb this tree, remember?”

“They said I drowned, but I didn’t…”

“They took me…”

Arlen turned toward the voice that wasn’t just memory. It was here. Now. Real.

From the trunk of the old tree, a figure stepped out, made of mist and rainlight.

Eira.

She looked older—but only just. As if the years had tried to reach her but got lost in the storm.

“You came,” she said, her voice no louder than a breath.

Arlen could barely speak. “Where have you been?”

“In between,” she answered. “In the Rain. I was caught in a memory too strong to die.”

He stepped closer. “I don’t understand.”

Eira knelt, touching one of the floating droplets. Inside it shimmered a younger version of her, running through the woods, laughing, free.

“This rain,” she said, “it’s not water. It’s what the world forgets. It falls when a place refuses to let go. When grief pools too deep.”

She looked into his eyes.

“You remembered me. That’s why I could come back.”

The rain began to move again.

But now, Arlen saw faces in every drop—people long gone. Regrets left unsaid. Joys half-lived. The sky had become a tapestry of memory.

“Can you leave with me?” he asked.

Eira’s smile faded. “Only if the rain lets me.”

A low rumble filled the air—not thunder, but something deeper. The world resisting.

“You can’t take memories back without a cost,” she whispered. “The rain needs balance.”

“What cost?”

Eira hesitated. “One of us stays.”

Arlen looked at the suspended droplets, each holding the weight of someone’s forgotten moment. A world so desperate to bury its pain that it had let the rain do it for them.

He took Eira’s hand.

“No more forgetting.”

And then he stepped into the center of the clearing.

He closed his eyes.

Let the rain fall through him.

He whispered names of the lost. Names of those who never got to be remembered. His mother. Eira. Children from the flood. Strangers whose stories were washed away in silence.

He became the memory.

When Arlen opened his eyes, the rain had stopped.

The sun pushed through the clouds for the first time in a week. Birds sang—a fragile, trembling chorus.

Eira stood beside him, solid, alive.

But Arlen’s reflection in the puddles… was fading.

And as she turned to thank him—

he was gone.

Now, on rainy days in Durnwick, you’ll sometimes hear a soft voice in the drizzle.

People say it’s just the wind.

But if you really listen, you might hear Arlen’s whisper:

“Don’t forget.

Remember her.

Remember all of us.”

Because some memories fall like rain.

And some never stop falling.

THE END

Or maybe just the beginning… every time it rains.