It was such a silent day. The rain seemed to chase us indoors and under the bed covers in sheets and heavy, spitting triumphs. It was a shame to us kids. The three of us danced around silently, pouncing off walls with anticipation and disappointment, until we three decided we were sick of the wet.

“Today should be boundless!” we declared.

So, unperturbed, we ventured out to challenge the rain.

We fought wind and rain upon exiting our abode. It whipped at our lashes and iced our far away places. But after a while the feeling of our lips and extremities melted into numbness, like mouths after a teeth pulling at the dentist. We played. Oh how we played. First jumping in the soggy mud puddles that dripped off us so easily, then trouping around in an unsuccessful version of hide and seek (which we played more for the merit of it in the clouding rain).

The day seemed to stretch on, and the rain with it. But slowly, eventually, and towards the afternoon, it petered down to a barely describable rain, soft and gentle. We sat  with our feet in the gutters, toying with the smoothness of its flow. Marianna, with her little head of angel-wisp hair, picked up a heart shaped leaf that had been blown away from its brothers in the rain. She smiled.

“Race you!”

And it was on.

We raced leaf after leaf, brown, yellow, green, red, and at one point a piece of bark and a discarded chocolate wrapper. A few times Marianna won, but only because the other two of us lacked appropriate leaf racing technique. After a while the fun of competing wore off, and we raced our little leaves as if they were boats in a smooth current with us sleeping on board.

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We raced leaves all afternoon. We raced them until the gushing in the gutters stopped and the sky turned orange and the smell of dinner filled the air.