The Coming Of The Rain Bird

Bridey is desperate for rain 300 words

The Coming Of The Rain Bird

Bridey Connor wiped her face and throat while she looked at the sky. The sun beat down mercilessly and the sky was bright blue without clouds. She pushed a damp lock of hair off her brow.

“If we don’t get rain soon, my garden is beyond hope.”

She stepped outside and shaded her eyes from the heartless sun. She walked to the pump in the yard with a bucket and pumped in vain.

“Even the spring that flows underground, is too low to feed the pump or gone entirely,” she sobbed.

Dragging the empty bucket behind her, she went back to the slight coolness of her hut. Stepping inside, she closed the door dispiritedly. As the sun began to set, she heard a knocking sound on her closed shutters.

Peeking through the gaps in the slats, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Saints be praised! It’s a green woodpecker, a bird that predicts rain!”

She began to dance around her floor, gathering anything she could collect rain in.

“After all, it takes a while for the pump’s water table to build back up,” she told herself.

She set all the receptacles from her big mixing bowl to her teapot well away from the eaves of the hut, the better to collect the coming precipitation. Just as she began to run back inside again, she felt big drops of rain hit her on the head. She stopped abruptly and turned her face to the sky with her mouth open.

When she was thoroughly soaked and not thirsty anymore, Bridey splashed her way through the accumulating puddles and went inside. Without toweling off, she donned her wrapper and opened the shutters on the only window. She stood there smiling while watching life come back to the land.