A vignette by Allana

She was cold and wet and tired, but she couldn’t help thinking what a wonderful painting she would make at that moment. Rain fell like little drops of liquid ice, soaking into her dress, making the folds of cloth sing a louder song of “swish-swish.” The wind was strong; the long skirts flickered like a flame of black smoke. She had her hood up. She didn’t even think until she passed the clock tower that she could have used her umbrella, but she had enough to carry already, and the wind could have turned it inside out, and then where would that leave her? She didn’t notice so much how soaked her jacket was getting, just that the wind cut through it and it was cold. She tucked the roses’ stems into the zipped jacket, the yellow blooms sprouting off to one side, just under her chin. She clasped her music to her chest to keep the roses from falling and to keep some heat from escaping. Struggling with the wind to escape, long strands of hair were trapped by the binder as well. There really was something dreamlike about walking through the storm, the billowing of the dress, the unruly hair and the hood—romantic in the historic sense of the word. The night and the rain and the wind were her companions, and she sheltered the bright roses against all of them, the roses her parents had ordered for her, then forgotten what they ordered. When people began to ask, she made sure that the answer, “my parents,” came before the question, so that they would not ask about him… Cold and wet and tired, but walking in a dream across the landscape, she didn’t want the vision to end, cradling the sunshine roses to her neck like a baby.