Haha, I hope you all enjoy my story that was inspired by Blue's Clues. They were watching the dripping and I became enticed and started to write about it. Hah, I'm such a dork. It's the first serious thing I've tried to write in a while. The English story doesn't count because the whole thing amused me.

I'm not quite sure if this is good, but I liked writing it and I don't believe it's too horrid. Enjoy!! And...Merry Respective Holidays!!

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It formed slowly, but not always. A small bubble was the start of its creation, growing, clinging tightly to the overhang. It would grow heavier and heavier, the trials of its life weighing it down until it released.

As it fell through the air, there was a moment where the light hit it, and it looked like a drop of golden light. It made the whole journey worthwhile, this one second where it was changed into something new and shinny.

Before the glow could fade, the drop smashed into the ground, splattering against the pavement, its existence extinguished in a millisecond. Another drop of water collided with the center of his forehead, leaving a damp spot in its wake.

More formed as the sun rose higher in the sky, causing the snow to melt. Drip, drop, drip, drop. Some more splashed on his face, trailing around his eyes, coursing down his pale cheeks like the tear tracks no one has ever seen.

The overhang above his window was far too high for him to reach so there he lay. Tiles were cool against his back, snow melting against his shirt, chilling his skin.

Sometimes he wondered what was on the second roof. Up there, too high for him to reach. Up there where he could, hopefully, get away from the sounds of the world for a time.

The house was silent just then, his father sleeping off a hangover, his mother at work. She'd be home soon and then the yelling would start. Just like last night and the night before.

The sun continued on its trek across the blue sky. Fluffy white clouds threw shadows over his body as they wormed their ways across the vast expanse. At least he didn't have to worry about rain just then.

He would still come out here when it rained. Here, to the one place he felt safe. His father never ventured out here, being afraid of heights and his mother left him alone whenever she could. After the first time she had seen her husband's fist smack his, she refused to meet his eyes.

It got colder as they day went on. Almost cold enough to make him get his jacket from inside, but not quite. He didn't know when his father would wake, he couldn't chance it. And maybe if he got sick, he'd get to stay home tomorrow.

School was worse than home. People didn't pay him much mind, the teachers in their bumbling ways, trying to help. But he didn't have a roof to escape to. He tried once, in eighth grade, and got suspended for a week. His father had 'motivated' him not to try it again.

The fiery ball was nearing the end of its journey when a battered station wagon pulled into the cracked driveway. A tired woman climbed out, laden with bags of groceries. It wouldn't be long now.

He could see, in his mind, his mother heaving the bags onto the table. Her long brown hair, matted to her head from a day of meaningless labor, falling into her eyes as she stacked a few meager boxes and cans into the dingy cabinets. She'd wipe her hands on her rumpled dress, floral patterns hiding some of the smaller stains. She'd start on dinner, a can of soup, warmed on the barely functional stove.

His father would stumble into the kitchen not long after the soup began to simmer. He'd look in the fridge and then turn to glare at his wife. She hadn't brought enough bags in to possibly have gotten more beer. He'd ask where it is, a t-shirt stretched tightly over the developing gut, scratching at some part of his body in an unseemly fashion.

He mimicked his mother's words, spitting them scornfully into the air. "I don't think you need it anymore. Maybe you should get a job.

His father's glare would harden and he'd either start yelling or just hit her. It would depend on how bad today's hangover was.

It seemed that he had started yelling if his mother's shrieks were anything to go by. "Lazy….a job….out….my house!"

His father's baritone reached him, even out there, traveling through the kitchen, up the stairs, and through his doorway and cracked window. "Who the hell do you think you are?" he shouted. "Just 'coz you got some fancy job you think you wear the pants around here!"

The boy snorted, eyes watching as the drops start to freeze. Fancy job? Who was he kidding, his mother worked ten to twelve hours a day at a sleazy restaurant, being hit on by assholes all day long. He couldn't see what she had ever seen in that man. But maybe, being abused, he was just the teensy bit biased.

The screaming escalated to a fevered pitch, the sounds of shattering dishware and all sorts of other things reaching his ears. Annoyed, anger stealing his breath, he clambered to his feet. The tiles were icy under his sneaker-ed feet and he gripped tightly at his window frame.

Maybe if he just stretched, stretched just a little bit more, he'd be able to just…

….there! He dug his fingers into the overhang, stretched to his limit, standing on the absolute tips of his toes like a ballerina. He pulled, swinging a jean-clad leg up and barely over.

Just as he was trying to pull the rest of his body over his fingers slipped. The air was yanked from his lungs as he scrabbled for a hold, finding one nearly a second too late.

He grinned then, exhilarated. Who knew almost tumbling to one's death could be so fun? A moment later he had pulled himself to the highest point in his house and was gazing at the ground. It looked further away than when he was right outside his window, even though the distance couldn't be more than eight feet.

He had a clear view of the purple and rose colored sky, the sun hiding on the horizon. Off to one side the clouds were already turning purple as the sky darkened to blue. The air was colder than before, his fingers stiff. His muscles jerking in a way that was supposed to generate heat but ended up making him look like he was having a fit.

He had longed for so long to be able to climb up here, to be able to view the crappy neighborhood with a bird's sight. Now that he was there, it wasn't that astounding. In fact, he missed the wall containing his window that provided some shelter from the wind.

"Alex?" a voice called, floating gently up to his ears, the wind shoving it away before pulling it back again. "Where are you?"

He slipped and slid across the gray tiles, getting a white knuckle grip on the edge of the roof before looking over the edge. A lined and wrinkled face peeked out his broken window before looking upwards.

"What are you doing?" his mother asked, a cut in the corner of her mouth. "Get down here." He remembered times when her orders would have frightened him into obeying, scared him so much that he tripped over his feet to obey. Now, it just sounded used, tired and done with life. "Get down here now, Alex."

He looked at her, eye flicking back between the ground, two stories below, and a face that always had a guilty look on it. "Alex," she cautioned, her tone holding a warning she couldn't enforce. She knew he wasn't afraid of her and deep down, he knew, she understood what he was thinking.

He'd be surprised if she hadn't some time in the past. If the bottles of sleeping pills tossed in the garbage weren't an indication of anything, he'd eat cabbage. He hated cabbage. Almost as much as he hated her, for bringing him into this world, into this life, and then telling him he couldn't leave it. She refused to divorce her abusive husband even though she was their source of income. Income he spent on alcohol every night.

"Alex, now. Please." He looked once more at the ground, so far away, but so close, and then to his mother. He sighed, eyes slipping closed for a second, before he let his legs dangle over the edge, carefully lowering himself back to the other roof.

She grabbed onto his leg, not to help him balance, but to hold on. Once she was sure he wouldn't leap she left, back to sweep up the debris from the earlier argument. She'd then open a new can of chicken soup, back to pretending this hadn't happened. Just like every night before that.

His father's car was gone from the driveway and so he'd watch her from the two seater table as she moved gracefully about the tiny room, stirring a rusty pot. The sun set as he exchanged the damp shirt for a dirty yet dry one.

He glanced once, wistfully, towards his window that couldn't close all the way. A droplet of water, sparkling from the light of one of the few functional street lamps, splashed onto the roof tile, right where his head had lay earlier.

Right where his head would lay tomorrow, when he pretended to be sick. Maybe tomorrow he'd fly, for one second, shining in the golden glow of the sun, much like the drops of water, only to splatter on the pavement below like so many before.