We Met in the Rain

            We met in the rain, without words. It was beautiful. When my lips met hers, slowly, hesitantly, it was without restraint, or care. They were soft, wet from the cold dripping rain, and chapped from the constant howling wind. I didn’t care; neither did she.

            We met in the ruins of the abbey atop the hill and hid in the archway that now led to nothing. In days of old it was proud and tall, a safe haven for all the townspeople and travelers and monks, now abandoned but for us.

            I’ve known her my whole life, but I’ve always thought of her as mine, my Eliza. I don’t know if she ever thought of me the same, but when we were in the abbey ruins, our lips pressed tightly together, I felt like I was hers. She could have had me for all our lives, had they not been so short.

            We only ever met in the rain.

            Alanna dashes up the hill, stumbles, falls. She pushes to her knees and crawls forward, willing herself to stand again. She slips in the mud and the wet and presses ever forward. The hill is steep, the many stairs too visible for her to dare approach. Instead, she uses her hands to claw herself determinedly up the mossy slope, drowned in rain and lichen.  

            The hill overlooks the entire town to the south, and to the west lies miles of ocean. In the autumn storms it lies dark and dormant, rain meeting waves in cacophonous marriage. Atop the hill lies graves, and the ruins.

            An abbey, once rivaled by none, now lies downtrodden. Its stone walls and vaulted ceiling are gaunt and broken, with centuries dividing it from ruin and its life as vanguard of the faithful. Its grand face remains, with large windows devoid now of glass and merely a gaping mouth where the grand wooden door once welcomed worshipers. The roof protected one last remaining transept, connected to the rest of the ruins by a tall tower visible for many miles.

            It is in this last vestige of hope and piety that Alanna finally arrives, cold, wet, and dirty, like many a weary soul searching for guidance. But instead of clergy she seeks the company of another young woman, for whom she has been longing to see.

            Alanna waits in the transept under the tower, wrapping her dampened cloak tighter around her. The thunder rolls, and she trembles, but not for the cold.

            She trembles with apprehension, with anticipation, with desire. Will she be left alone, as the sky darkens and grows dim, til the only light to shine her way back the lightning striking ever closer?

            She trembles.

            A clap of thunder shakes the crumbled abbey, and Alanna’s eyes dart to the patches of clouded sky. She blinks just as lightning illuminates the entire hillside, leaving sizzled dirt where damp earth once lay.

            She blinks and sees for just a moment a specter, the bright white outline of what she can only describe as something unnatural. Something that cannot be. Something dead.

            For a long second it stares back at her, this shining specter of a girl with long unkempt hair and sunken eyes, staring at Alanna as if they’re old friends.

            Alanna blinks again, her face stricken in silent screams. Then the thunder rolls and the lightning strikes again, near the first patch of fire-struck earth, and Alanna is once again alone.

            “Are you there?” a voice calls, gently but urgently, barely audible over the din.

            Alanna tries to call back. It takes three strangled tries before she manages.

            “Eliza? Is that you?”

            Another rain-drenched woman, young as Alanna and just as beautiful, emerges from the darkened empty doorway and rushes to her, desperate. They grab each other and hold on, tight enough to leave reddened marks on frozen skin.

            For many seconds they don’t speak, merely touch. Eliza, the taller of the two, presses kisses to Alanna’s forehead, gripping her by the head as though she might disappear. Alanna wraps her arms around Eliza’s waist and pulls her close, hands slowly making their way up Eliza’s back.

            “I missed you,” Alanna murmurs, accepting every kiss like the blind man receiving Jesus’ healing touch.

            “Not as much as I missed you, my love,” Eliza says, resting her head against Alanna’s. “It was nothing short of torture to watch you in the square yesterday and not call out.”

            Alanna smiles, burrows closer to the other girl, impervious to the rain that once caused her to tremble. “I saw you looking, and I’ve thought of nothing since.”

            They stay like that for long minutes, swaying gently back and forth in the wind. Their arms keep each other warm, their embrace staves off the chill. And for these long minutes they feel nothing but the deepest, most perfect love. They stand protected under the tall shadowed tower, sheltered from the wind and the fear and the rain.

            And then the thunder rolls, and the lightning flashes closer and closer to the ruins. Alanna gazes skyward, pulls back in alarm as a crack echoes through the transept.

            “Shh, my dearest,” Eliza comforts, pulling Alanna close again. “It is only the storm. Nothing more.”

            “But if were followed – ”

            “We weren’t.”

            “But if we were – ”

            “No one dares to come here but us, Alanna,” says Eliza. She looks Alanna in the eye, hands caressing her cheek and hair. “No one but us and the spirits that dwell here.”

            “Don’t speak of such,” Alanna begs, but she doesn’t break her gaze from Eliza’s.

            “Then let us not speak,” Eliza grins.

            Their lips meet gently, held back by the sins they are so ready to commit. They take their time exploring this long-desired closeness, pressing ever inwards until it’s unclear where Alanna’s skin ends and Eliza’s begins. Neither have a thought nor care beyond the feel of the other’s touch.

            And then the thunder rolls, and the lightning strikes, and three horrifying things happen at once.

            From the darkened doorway comes an angry shout, as two men stand frozen in shock.

            From the rain-soaked transept, barely sheltered from the elements, Alanna and Eliza spring apart, caught mid-embrace.

            From the sky, a mighty crack as lightning strikes one final time, illuminating the four figures as the stricken tower crumbles.

            Mere seconds pass but Alanna feels the weight of every one of them as heavy as the stones surrounding her. She watches as her dearest Eliza stands one moment in front of her, hand still clinging to Alanna’s cloak, and in the next moment, gone.

            Where she once stood was now only rubble, as the once mighty tower disintegrates into ruin. The last vestige of light and clarity, the final champion of truth and love, now dead on the muddy ground, beneath layers of lightning-scorched stone.

            Thunder rolls, and Alanna screams.

           

            The men drag Alanna from the ruins. The stonemason and the priest, sent to investigate reports of ghostly sightings in the storm, see her only for her sins. They listen not to protestations or grief, and pause only to wonder if there is anything to be done for the other girl…but her body is not to be recovered, this night or any.

            Alanna knows nothing but her pain, and sees Eliza disappear with every falling tear. The men carry her to the town hall, where a waiting council of stern-faced elders await, her father among them. Eliza’s father, among them.

            “We found no spirits, save only she,” begins the stonemason, casting Alanna to the floor with disgust.

            “Alanna, I demand the truth!” Her father’s words register only dimly.

            “…and one other,” finishes the stonemason.

            “Another? Where is the culprit?”

            “Young fools in love?”

“Has the young man escaped you, then?”

The priest speaks up, still as the grave. “Young woman, actually.”

There is silence. Alanna cries and shivers and remains prone on the dirt floor. The fire lit in the room is not enough to warm her, will never be enough again.

The priest matches solemn gaze with Eliza’s father. “It was your daughter, who now answers for her sins before God, for she no longer stands on this earth.”

Gasps are drowned out by Alanna’s frightful sobs. She wishes to be dead as well, and not here, alone among her nightmares.

“Eliza?” the man says. “My Eliza, dead?”

“And what manner of sins were you committing there together, that she may end up dead?” demands Alanna’s father, fear and anger lovingly intertwined in his voice.

“I…” she begins, but her voice cracks and fails. “I loved her, and she loved me. She…she was mine.”

At her confession the rain seemed to pour down harder, gaining torrential power as it sought to drown out her wails.

The men murmur, and seem not to know what to do.

“We cannot let our town fall to sin,” begins the priest.

“My daughter is dead and yet you speak of sin?”

“Was it not her sin that caused her to become so?” spits the stonemason, who had seen the wickedness with his own eyes.

“Mine is alive, though I refuse to be grateful,” says Alanna’s father, stern and strong. “She must be punished.”

There are more whispers, suggestions, and Alanna hears none of them. She craves death. If they choose to spare her, she will seek it herself. It was a pact she had made, not with Eliza but with herself, and she knows deep inside she cannot live in this world freely, openly, and without reservation. She is either a lover of women – a lover of one woman – or she is no one at all.

The men come to a decision, and Alanna only realizes this as she is grabbed by each arm and hauled to her feet. They do not hold her, and the men are forced to drag her out of the town hall. She dimly notices that one of them is her father. He is not looking at her.

The rain shocks her into feeling once more, and she raises her head to stare deep into the darkness. She gazes towards the direction of the abbey ruins, of Eliza’s final resting place, and knows she will be there again soon.

Alanna is taken to her home, her father’s house, and shut into her room. She knows not if the door is locked or barricaded for she does not test it. She does not think. She does not sleep.

The rain continues until morning. It does not stop, but merely lightens as the sky turns from inkbottle night to the green-tinged grey unique to the seaside. The light has barely touched the earth when her door opens, and her mother stands before her.

“Is it true what they’ve said?” Her voice is falsely strong, as though she is only allowed so many words before her mouth fails.

Alanna turns to meet her mother’s eyes. She does not need to speak.

Her mother gasps, and one hand rises to shield her mouth. The other whips out and catches Alanna across the cheek. The pain is sharp and smart but Alanna has no tears left to shed, no emotion left that could broach this unending chorus of desperate screams that blind all her senses.

Her mother leaves. Alanna does not see her again.

Her father comes for her and, wordless, takes her by the arm and pulls her outside. She does not resist, and trudges behind him, head down, rain seeping into her still-damp clothes. She only know realizes she’s still covered in the mud of the night before.

They continue on a long-winding path through town, displaying her wickedness for all to see. She distantly hears shouts and perhaps jeers, but cares little for them. She raises her head when she realizes that they have started to ascend up the hill to the ruins, and the men from the night before are waiting at the top. Right next to Eliza’s remains.

Her father drags her towards them and throws her to the ground, as if she were nothing more than something dead and rotten washed up from the sea. He moves to stand with the other men and she looks only at the pile of stones where Eliza lay crushed.

The priest begins to chant, a call that echoes through the ruins and invites all manner of ghostly responses.

They do not disappoint.

The sky darkens so suddenly that all look up, only to see tumultuous dark clouds rolling in from over the ocean, swiftly coming to swirl above them. The priest falters, but renews strength and faith and continues on, despite thunderous melodies of sudden roaring seas.

Lightning strikes and in her heart of hearts Alanna calls out for Eliza to be with her.

She waits, staring only at the ruins, until lightning strikes again. One of the men shouts in alarm, and soon they all turn to stare. Alanna looks on in solemnity as the specter, so fearsome to her the night before, arises again from the stone and mud. But this time it does not disappear as quickly as it comes; this time, it drifts ever closer.

Within seconds the dead-eyed ghost girl is close enough to touch, and a few of the men splinter off and run down the hill, screaming. Another faints at the sight. Still more stand in frozen silence, and one prostrates himself, begging for his life.

Alanna just waits.

The luminous ghost of love once killed beckons for Alanna, and she rises to her feet.

“Begone, foul demon, I cast you out in the name of the one and Holy God!” cries the priest, the only one brave enough to speak.

Alanna brushes past him, and he proves not brave enough to do much else. The specter leads Alanna past Eliza’s tomb and through the ruinous remains, past grassy mounds and dried-up wells to the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea. The abbey once proudly beckoned ships and spirits alike to its misty shores and now is warns all away from the poisonous town below.

The ghost pauses only at the very tip of the headland, and waits for Alanna to come so close they are nearly touching. Alanna finds herself enchanted by this apparition, for although it appears only in the form of some nameless girl, she sees in it Eliza, and herself, and many women before and after, dressed in strange attire as they smile sadly at her, reaching out their hands. She reaches out her own, and it gently passes through the shivering death, and for a moment she feels the truth and beauty known only in the afterlife. She understands love, as pure and boundless as it can only seldom be, between mother and child and selfless lovers.

It is with this last joyous reproach that she is encompassed in the ghost’s embrace. She sways gently with the cold absent touch, and as she sighs out in contentedness, lightning cracks.

Thunder strikes.

The headland crumbles into the sea, and Alanna crumbles with it.