The rain had caught her quite by surprise.
She liked being prepared for everything. She liked being in control. In knowing beforehand, in possibly predicting. In the safety of the thought, that she was doing the most she could, towards self-preservation, always.
‘You didn’t check the weather forecast!’, her inner voice spoke. Sharp, taunting. ‘Well, with the bright sunshine, blue skies, and white clouds, who would have thought!’, another inner voice replied, this time a softer tone, defensive. ‘Have to agree to that’, the sharp voice said, and further continued, ‘But now that we do not have an umbrella, are we going to get drenched?!’.
She looked around. She had been walking along a tree-lined avenue, and a particular one caught her interest.
‘It’s not like there is any other covered area you can possibly reach’. ‘Yeah, fine! I will go stand under it and hope that the rain passes soon.’
Her voices having had reached a consensus, she edged closer to the tree. Skeptically at first, and then inching closer and closer, until finally, almost leaning onto its trunk.
It rained around them, her and the tree.
Cars whizzed past. She saw the evening sunlight dancing merrily on the grass. For a moment she stood, touching the bark gently with her palm, feeling its coarse roughness. She looked up into the tree, its branches towering over her, its thick foliage spreading wide. She closed her eyes.
She could hear the cars, the squirrels, the birds, and the rain.
She could hear her, and the tree.
