Title: The Rain City
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 183 words.
Notes: You can find more of my published fiction, as well as free fiction, here.
The first drops hit the pavement, and the city unfolds.
Water seeps into cracks and carves them into streets. Rain beads on air, shaping glass towers where there was only sky. The gutters swell, and from the reflection of every puddle, windows blink open, neon signs flicker, the low hum of traffic rumbles into being.
You can walk its streets only while the downpour lasts. You can press your palm to the cold, wet stone of buildings that will be gone by morning. The people here are made of mist and memory. Their faces run in the rivulets of water streaking down bus windows.
The rain slows.
It starts with the smallest thing—the closing of a shop door that was never there. A streetlamp flickers out. The gutters dry.
Then, all at once, the city is gone. The world is just wet pavement and the sharp smell of petrichor, and if you tell anyone about the place that only exists in the rain, they’ll say you imagined it.
And maybe you did.
But tomorrow, when the storm comes, you’ll go looking again.
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