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Recent seasons had been kind to the ravaged Heartwood. Life had sprouted from the ashes, and patches of green could be found where once there was nothing but destruction. The forest owed much of its recovery to the healing, nourishing spring rains—and though this deluge was to be out of place, an anomaly in the dry days of late summer, it surely was welcomed, nonetheless.

It began raining early, and did not let up. Throughout the morning and the afternoon, it poured, it poured, it poured. Ravines and hollows within the woods began to fill up with water; the leaves on the new trees drip-drip-dripped in a constant rhythm.

The Heartwood was not the only territory to receive the rains, nor would this be the last time this month it would see them. But if one stood in the center of the forest, there was a curious, peaceful solitude to it: alone in the waterfall, amid life and death and time's inexorable march onward.

For all its pitfalls, the rain—for now—was a good thing.

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