Lina never tried to catch them or show them to anyone. But every rainy season after that, she left a thimble of honey on the windowsill—not for the bees, but for the little creatures made of rain, who came each year to remind her that nothing truly lost is ever gone. It just goes underground, waiting for the wet season to bring it back up.
That night, the rain came like a curtain dropping. Lina lay awake, listening. And then she heard it: a soft tap-tap-tap on the windowpane, not from a branch. She pulled the blanket to her chin and turned. rainy season creatures
All night, the rainy season creatures came. They didn't speak, but they left gifts: a forgotten button polished silver, a dried petal made soft again, a single note of a song her grandfather used to whistle. By dawn, they had slipped back into the gutters and down to the flooded fields. Lina never tried to catch them or show them to anyone
There, pressed against the glass, was a face no bigger than her thumb. It had no mouth, only two wide, wet eyes the color of moss. Its body was long and thin, like a comma made of rainwater, and it clung to the glass with tiny, translucent fingers. Behind it, dozens more were sliding down the roof tiles, curling around the gutters, dripping from the eaves. That night, the rain came like a curtain dropping
Every year, just before the first big storm broke the summer’s back, Lina’s grandmother would pull the heavy clay pots inside and hang bundles of dried lemon leaves over every door. “They don’t like the bitter smoke,” she’d say. She never said who they were.