seems like frosting to me

[two hundred, seventy-two]

It was cool, not the kind of cool that you could say much about, but it wasn't warm enough for shorts, and it wasn't cold enough for a scarf, so there surely wasn't much to say. It was just after a rain, it seemed, like a forty minute, short film of a shower, that came down in buckets and fell promptly on the neighbour's rose bushes, she smiled a lot after it rained. It was hard to explain to anyone really what you mean when you say "My life is a pathetic falacy, save me," but some people do try. Her best friend had told her once that when it rained it took the air out of her, just knocked her to the ground so that she was surrounded by muck and wet, and that surely wasn't much of a rainy day.

They were supposed to be, you know, intense.

They were supposed to be releasing, in a freedom-on-the-side-of-your-plate kind of way. Liberating, in that sense, it was to go walking. Sam had gone walking. She had noticed the water falling over the roses, the petunias, the dozen other kinds of flowers rooted deeply next to the fence that connected Helen, her neighbour, and her house. There was a grey feeling, the smell of wet pavement filled the air, the smell of gray.

So Sam was walking, yes, down the street. Mundane, it was, to walk. No one ever thinks of walking until it is mentioned, and then after that it really couldn't be any more complicated. Sam took one look at her moving legs and smiled, just as Helen was smiling out of her window at the roses, at the sky, Sam smiled down at her legs, and then at the sky, and then once at Helen. Helen loved her roses, and Sam loved her some rain.

The street ended eventually of course, and so did Sam's journey down it, although she wouldn't forget that day, wouldn't forget that walk in particular, it had taken her forty minutes exactly, forty minutes of freeing-and-swaying through the raindrops, through the calamity-packed shower that was the day's rainfall, to get down her street. Living on the outskirts of town did that to you, it soaked you through your being and into your organs.

Weird it was, to think of your organs in danger of getting wet. Was she like an electric board? One that if wet would spark and expel smoke, smoking organs was not a lovely thought. Her smile faltered, and she forget where she was going. Why was thinking so hard? Thinking and walking. One step two steps three steppings four step-on's, it was hard to focus, it was hard to get her mind off anything but thinking. She smiled again then, thinking was too inevitable to take too much thought to, and more smiles occured.

And the rain stopped then, she smiled. Sam loved smiling, and not only because it showed the world the happiness, but it showed herself that she was capable, she had that intact to her, she could hold that feeling that being close to her, inwards to her heart as if the only things clinging to a life within her was that smile. Those smiles, that day, began the journey not only down the road, but further, deeper, towards the centre, towards understanding.

Sam didn't understand a lot of things, she didn't recognise things, she couldn't remember nice pretty words or funny jokes, but she did remember things like Helen's cat's name is Star, and he liked small bits of soft pie crust if you were happening to be leaving one out for cooling. Sam loved that cat, and her street, and the days where she could walk down and not have to really think about something structured, something fancy, something hard to understand, but try to make the journey to getting there.

focus: a new character? Or an old one, who should be dressed in pink.

Jess :]