The rain kept pouring down, unceasing, unrelenting, and yet at the same time refreshing. Pounding the pavement, clearing out the old dirt ground into it by the daily beatings of hundreds of shoes taking their turn on the old marble. The torrents of water cascaded down the cracks in the limestone, taking with it invisible pieces of the carbon-based rock. The bluish-grey stone revealed none of this as the litter abandoned by passersby floated overhead – cigarette butts from the high schoolers not yet old enough to buy their own, assorted wrappers from various candies also went for a swim.

The water flowed down the slanted rock, pulled up from its proper placement by the root of the overgrown tree that could not be cut down for the power line embedded in it, the maple tree’s large branches nearly touching the ground, making it impossible for the landowners to mow beneath it. The longer grass had been flattened by the rain’s velocity, no match for the force of nature that is gravity. Tiny twigs and branches fell to the damp earth as well, leaves giving the surface a blanket of sorts.

The colours of the leaves belied the season, their oranges and reds, and some browns, and the incredible number of vacancies on the branches gave the impression of an abrupt change in temperature.

The rain continued its assault on everything in range, including the hollowed out trunk of the old swing tree, the one that had collapsed under repeated man-made earthquakes of construction workers across the grey, recently redone street. The cranes lifted tons of steel and concrete to the newly constructed library; the workers removed the old, creaky beams and dropped them to the ground. The tree, having stood there longer than the house next to it, in its old age could not withstand the continual drops of tons of metal, the reverberations taking its toll on the integrity of the trunk. Down it collapsed one day, taking out the children’s badminton net in its death throes. Now, after much attacks with the chain saw, there was still a large part of it remaining, but merely as a shelter for squirrels.

The girl walked out the door, hood up over her head to protect her hair from the drenching rain. Ignoring the roar of the occasional thunder, she put her head down and started her walk through the wind-whipped rain, kicking the puddles of water as she went, soaking the back of her legs as she traversed the length of the sidewalk. Ignoring the refuse from the trees and the other people who had been that way before, she disrupted the flow of the water for a moment, but only a moment, for after she had passed through, the rain continued its path to the drainage ditch as if she’d never been there.