It's never the way you expect it to look that day. If you think it will thunder and rain, that clouds will consume the sky, or a cold wind will sway the trees back and forth in a hurricane gale, the sun will shine and birds will sing their usual song. When the sun should be smiling and the clouds should be wispy shades of white, it rains, not storms or drizzles, just rains, constant like the sting of a headache.

When the rains came there was no ceremonious howl of the wind or crackle of thunder. No. There was just rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. I don't know. Maybe it was the lack of pageantry that made it so surreal—the rain, the water, the destruction, the people being swept away by the current, the death. When I reach back into that time, all I can draw out is a little blue ball that floated to my feet as I looked across the landscape covered in water. I remember how the color of that little ball perfectly matched the color of the sky that day and how a light breeze made the cattails beat gently against each other. I wanted to be part the water, the sky, the cattails, not out of a desire for death, but just so I could release all of my anger and frustration in a single puff of blue. I sat right down in the mud and let my feet slip into the water. I flung my head back and reached my hands towards the sky and stared at them. My hands. I knew I shouldn’t be there as there were survivors to tend to and, perhaps more disturbingly, bodies to bury, bodies that belonged to people I had once known. After a moment I got up, and tried to wipe the mud off as best as I could, and I left that ball sitting there, so it could melt into the sky.

Now that I think about it, the sky was that same shade of blue on the day I made my way back to the village. The gravel under my feet made the exact same sound it always does, the bees danced around the same flowers they always do, and the same sweet smells of berry pies floated from the same little brown houses. I had experienced death plenty of times before because, after all, death sits behind a doctor, carefully watching every move he makes. I already knew that there were no bells or bolts of lightning before someone dies. Really, there is no way to know ahead of time, at least not in the sense of omens or signs. I knew this better than anyone I suppose, and yet… I opened the door and saw her lying there, and it wasn’t right. I needed something, a confirmation I suppose, to prove that it was true. Yeah, me—so serious, so logical—at the moment of my own personal tragedy, even I was grasping at superstition. I knelt down and held her hand, and it was so cold and clammy that it seemed to pass through me like a ghost. I… I… felt so useless. It was as if her eyelids became transparent and I could see her piercing eyes glaring at me so accusingly. Or maybe they were my eyes reflected a million times onto infinity, but I never thought my eyes, the eyes I saw so often, could possibly look that cold.

It wasn’t the last time things would work out this way of course. I couldn’t save Nuriko or Chiriko no matter how much I wanted to. No one made any accusations, but that didn’t stop the guilt from pouring down. I think I did the right thing now and I saved everyone I could. I now understand what I always knew. Death isn’t something that is so important that it has to be heralded by nature or mankind, or anything else. I have the tears of a dear friend and that is more then enough. Thank you Chichiri for understanding, at least a little bit. I know there is a future beyond this, but for this moment I think I will be part of the sky.

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