Majestic Rainfall

It was a heat so dense that it seemed to stifle sound, snatching the ends of our limp words and muffling the wearied drone of the insects. It weighed down on us, heavier still with each crawling hour. It seeped through our skin like invisible thick treacle where it clung on to our bones, laced round our muscles, and infused our blood with a slow, relentless burn. Our shirts - stiff with salt and sweat - grated against our backs with every move. This was Texas, deep in the burning heart of summer.

I lay sprawled across the floor of my platform tent, my legs dangling limply over the edge. From just within the fringes of my glazed vision, the almost imperceptible flutter of a withered blade of glass stirred me out of my reverie. I mustered myself upright and allowed my senses to grapple with my surroundings, each desperate pore in my body seeking blissful reprieve. Yes, there it was; an infinitesimal dimming of the dazzling blue sky, and a vague ruffle in the impenetrable blanket of heat.

I jumped from my shadowed haven with as much haste as my listless limbs would allow and headed for the bright open plane. Joining me, only hundreds of metres above, a myriad of magnificent deep purple clouds laced with glorious opals and tremoring greys came billowing and rippling across the sky, splintering the sheet of scorching blue and diluting the blisteringly furious heat. Enough! the clouds seemed to roar, as they gulped up the blue and embroiled it within their kaleidoscopic prism. Their blurred beauty emanated a graceful chill that burrowed down on me, caressing my flaming skin like silk. The army of clouds swirled lower and thicker still, crackling in crescendoing choruses until they finally burst open with a cascade of rainfall which fell in frantic and furious waves. The blanket of heat melted away, and with it the stifling silence, as the world around me woke up and devoured the moisture. I stretched myself upwards, twirling and bouncing through the rain, my body softening with every droplet. Every blade of grass and wilted leaf and cowering plant seemed to join me, the sea of green flickering wildly as the rain pummeled down in triumphant, endless streams. The rain soaked under my skin, cascading over my bones and diffusing the viscous heat which had lingered within me for so long. The clouds danced in victory, as the final remnants of the drought were fiercely washed away.