No. 49/100 flash fiction stories

It’s raining on Praxilius IV. 

You’ll probably find this a pretty uninteresting statement, but you’ve never been to Solana—we’re called the System of Six Suns for a reason. From space, every planet looks orange. Everywhere. No blue. No green. Just orange—and maybe a bit of brown to complement. 

To you, a desert is probably just a place you visit. For a single day, you “ooh” and “ahh” at the dunes, barely restrain yourself from touching a cactus, and hide in whatever shade your tour guide brought along. I don’t get that luxury. The endless sand, the relentless suns—they’re all I know. 

But today…it’s raining. I get to see it before all the rest. Once word spreads—and I know it’s spreading like wildfire over every news outlet in the system as we speak—people will be teleporting here all the way from Yaxner just to feel one drop of rain on their skin. The sparse desert will be crowded with tourists. 

For now, it’s just me and the rain. The cool water evaporates almost instantly on my warm skin.  Just over the peak of this dune, a small pool is starting to form. Even the rust spiders have come to sate their curiosity; they nearly blend in with the sand, but I can see their legs twitching as they scuttle to and fro, trying to decide what they think of this new sensation. 

A melancholy voice within me whispers that this won’t last long, but I push it away and decide not to care. I breathe in the dampness and smile. For this moment, I own the rain.

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Photo by Robert Murray on Unsplash