deluge [open]

It was raining for the fourth day in a row, and Roderick was sitting beneath a tree next to the he entrance of the front yard, half-way through a plump peach he'd snatched out of the cafeteria.

Something about the rain had always appealed to him.. Something about the consistent ambiance of the droplets hitting the ground made him feel at ease. No one else was in the yard, and it was rare that a car drove by in such a remote location, so it was just him and the steady drone of the rainstorm.

"Oh, for the love of - " a voice said angrily nearby. A dark-skinned girl with wild curly hair pulled back into a ponytail matched with an English accent was dragging along a suitcase. The rain soaked through her clothes as she desperately tried to find the entrance to the building. "Ohhhhh!" she cried, frustrated.

Then, in an almost cartoon-like fashion, a miniature grey cloud appeared just above her head. It proceeded to pour more rain on her.

"NOT HELPING!" she screeched at it. A miniature bolt of lightning zapped her in response, to which she only gritted her teeth and sat, defeated.

And just like that, frustrated screeching cut into the relative peace, and a girl marched through the front gates, a suitcase in tow.

There was a miniature rain cloud gathered just above her head, following her closely as she trudged down the courtyard pathway. In the midst of her angered crooning, a tiny bolt of lightning jumped out of the cloud and connected squarely with the top of her head.

Roderick took a sizeable bite out of his peach, craned his neck to get a better look at the newcomer from where he was slouched, and then called out, "I'd suggest an umbrella, but that seems doubly unsafe for you."

She squinted through the rain at him, curious at the boy sitting in the rain eating a peach. Although she wasn't one to judge as she was currently doing the same thing, minus the peach.

Not by choice, she thought. She wondered if she should go over and talk to him.

"Tell him to fuck off." As if by magic, a miniature figure appeared on her right shoulder in a cloud of red smoke. It seemed to be a small version of the girl herself, except with devil horns, a spiked tail, and a pitch fork.

"You can't respond with aggression!" Similarly, another miniature figure materialized on her left shoulder in a cloud of gold smoke; it was also a smaller version of the girl, but with a halo, wings, and a harp. "You'll never make friends that way!"

"Who said I wanted to make friends?" she mumbled.

"That's right, no friends, only enemies." The devil leaned into the crook of her neck. The girl sighed, then stood. The miniature devil figure latched onto her hair to steady herself. "The hell are you doing?"

The girl flicked the figure of her shoulder and it disappeared in a puff of red smoke before it could hit the ground. The angel smiled triumphantly before disappearing herself.

She walked a few paces over to the boy. "Do you go here? To this school, I mean."

He bit into something hard.

"Go here?" Roderick mumbled around a mouthful of fruit, gesturing towards the school. A second later, a large, penny-sized seed went sailing out of his mouth and into the dampened grass next to him. "Yeah, I go into it occasionally. I go everywhere. Rosebury, the lake.." What kind of question was that? He was squinting quizzically up at the girl as if she'd asked him what the answer to 1 + 1 was. ".. Why?"

She made a look of disgust at the peach pit, then slowly dragged her attention back to him. She fidgeted at his question, feeling stupid. "I only meant. . . I was just wondering if you were enrolled at Beata Academy. I'm from London, so I don't exactly know anyone here." By now the rain cloud above her head had dispersed, offering her some relief despite the regular rain still continuing. ". . .I was hoping maybe you could show me the way in, help me get out of this rain?"

There was a saying that people from London always had rain clouds following them around, and this girl was providing quite a literal example of that. Peculiar.

"Oh! Yeah, I'm enrolled. Why didn't you just ask?" He chuckled lightly. With a grunt of effort, Roderick pulled himself up onto his feet and tossed the gnawed peach core behind him. He rolled his shoulders and started along the mud-dappled pathway, giving no mind to the rain that immediately began pelting him as he left the cover of the tree's leaves.

"I did, I - " She shook her head. "Never mind." She thought him curious, but didn't comment on it. She caught up with him and matched his stride, moving a piece of hair that was plastered to her face from blocking her vision as she walked. "I'm Leah Bellamy. What about you?"

He didn't answer her question, focusing instead on swiping creeping raindrops away from his eyes. Feeling well didn't always go hand-in-hand with thinking straight, unfortunately. Roderick had been in high spirits all morning, but it was as if there was a selective filter somewhere between his ear and brain, only allowing certain words to be heard, and others discarded.

"People say April showers bring May flowers, but I'm seeing all rain and no flowers. April 'ought to let up, hey?" He smiled and combed his hair, now sopping wet, black tendrils, out of his face. It wasn't like he was a stranger to lots of rain, having lived in New Zealand for seventeen years, but wasn't America supposed to be sunny this time of year?

Her eyebrows knitted together in confusion as he skipped over her question and instead made a comment on the weather. Question marks began popping up over her head, and she waved them away in an annoyed fashion. Maybe she hadn't spoken loud enough? She felt her body flush with embarrassment. She had always been a shy person. She could ask his name again but - what if he had heard her and chose to ignore it?

"April showers, yeah. . ." she mumbled, and another raincloud - smaller this time - appeared above her. It sprinkled lightly, and flowers bloomed into an arrangement of a crown around her head. "London's worse by far," she continued on. "Not heavy rain, really, but grey skies, y'know? I hope this rain'll let up. I thought one of the good things about moving here would be better weather." She hesitated, then chanced asking him again. "What's your name?"

"Roderick," he finally responded, smiling briefly as a gesture of greeting. "I 'spose I should have mentioned that." The miniature rain cloud above the girl's head had dissipated, but in its place, tiny bundles of flowers had sprung up out of her hair, forming a neat circle all the way around her head. Had she just undergone the cycle of spring? What was next, a snow storm?

"It rains a lot back home, but it's never grey like that.. Or this." He gestured to the sky. England may have colonized and magically cursed his home country with an eternity of plentiful rain in the distant past, but thankfully, its gloomy nature had not been passed down. Perhaps the same could not be said for the US these days.. Maybe it was a delayed curse? "Perhaps this is America's way of welcoming you."

"Nice to meet you," she said after he introduced himself. She briefly glanced up at the clouded sky, humming to herself thoughtfully. "I do hope that's what it is," she mused, referencing America's 'welcome wagon'. "I've never been this far away from home before. Not even for holiday. But - " she shrugged, "this is supposed to be the best school for people like us, right? Well, you would know. How long have you been going to Beata? You said it rains a lot 'back home', where are from?"

Well, well. This was probably the first time someone hadn't automatically assumed he was an Aussie.

"I'm a Kiwi. Moved here from Whangarei," he pronounced in a practiced Maori accent. The Winter punted a small, rounded stone off into the grass, crossing his arms. His clothes were thoroughly soaked through with rainwater, but he didn't seem to mind. 'The best school for people like us'.. Roderick didn't really feel any different here than he had at his old high school. Kids were still rowdy and homework still came in droves. The only real difference was that when some people sneezed at Beata, they set the entire field on fire instead of launching a snot rocket. "Dad's a city-goer, mum's a coast-gal. I'm a funny mish-mash of the two, I 'spose."

"Sounds nice," she replied. She wasn't exactly sure where 'Whangarei' was, but it sounded as good a place as any to her. "I've lived in London all m'life. Same with m'mum and dad. Haven't really known anything else 'sides the city." She shrugged. "Guess it was time for a change." At the last word of her sentence, the colour in her shirt swirled from grey to a nice violet.

They finally made it up to the doors to the school. Leah put one hand on the entrance, then looked back to her walking companion. "It was nice meeting you," she said. "Maybe I'll see you around, yeah?"