The Rain Part 3

She swung her legs out of bed, shivering a little as her heels smacked the cold wooden floor. Quickly and quietly, she pulled on a warm woolen dress and a sweater over that. Warm wool socks covered her feet and her leather boots were snug as she laced them up. Her slicker topped everything off. It was little protection against the chill, but it was the only waterproof thing she owned.

Opening the door of her bedroom, she saw only darkness. After all, there was no point to staying up late with nothing to get done, so her parents were already asleep in their room. She could her father’s snoring hammering through the wall. She closed the bedroom door behind her, walking down the hall as softly as she could in the heavy leather boots. Luckily, her parents were both heavy sleepers. She paused in the main room, looking out one of the windows. The rain was still pouring down. She could see the blurry form of the mountain through the small drops that rolled down the pane.

For a moment, she stood there, holding her breath, wondering if she really had the courage to go through with this, before she could force her feet to move forward, one step at a time, toward the door. She knew that this was no ordinary rain and she thought that whatever lay at the top of that mountain was the solution. And if it wasn’t the answer, it was better to know than to spend one more day trapped inside, looking out at the downpour.

And she had to do something to get those horrible images out of her head. Visions of her parents losing the farm, of starving animals and starving children played behind her eyes, and it was this that finally made her push open the front door and step out into the torrent.

The rain was cold and it sent shivers through her bones as she made her way to the path and slowly started to climb. The road wasn’t very popular. A few rare merchants used it, but mostly her village traded with other villages in the valley, so little road up the mountain didn’t receive many visitors. Under this rain it had turned into a river of mud and her boots squelched with each step. She could feel it sucking her feet downward and fought for every step forward. She wished she had never started this journey, but her feet continued to take her forward and she didn’t look back.