Tiny raindrops caused ripples in the otherwise still water in a tiny pocket on the side of the street. She smiled vaguely all the while tapping her heels on the cobblestone while waiting for the bus to come. Her thoughts like every other day were not stagnant, but flowing, imagining faces, jokes which she could say (one day that is) and entire conversations in the vast expanse of her unbounded imagination. A rich world was created, its template based on her rather mundane surroundings. Its people molded from the real world personalities shaped to fit to exactly what she wanted.
The bus, red in color, which she would take everyday was on this occasion late and had made its almost regular passengers across its route wait for an excruciating hour and half. Most people had found other ways to reach home, safe from the impending rain and sit with their families enjoying the most basic and essential joy humanity knows. She however, had waited for her red chariot all the while replaying the scathing remarks by her boss which were passed at her and her work, only this time she did not stand silently, this time, in the world of her making she spoke her mind furiously shouting at her boss who was trying to run away as she hurled abuses at the man who had dared to tell her anything at all. In her fury she would also slap the man, who in the hallway leading to her cubicle would without fail touch her without her ever wanting to feel his dirty hands over her clean white shirt. She would then proceed to humiliate him while her co-workers cheered her on. The putter patter of raindrops on the tin roof of the tiny bus halt bought her back to the cold hard world, the place where she never spoke back to her boss, the place where she smiled and walked away from the man. It flooded the tiny pocket and sent street hawkers and other poor souls rushing for cover.
Rain was freeing for her, it engulfed her in a watery cocoon drenching her in a purity. As she walked, slowly, at some points playing like a child with puddles, watching the almost dark sky as clouds reigned supreme and immense bolts of lightning passing through them. She was far from home, walking with half her head between her two worlds as she crossed the bridge, walked to the other side, cut across through an alley and reached a bus halt where she would now have to catch a different one home. Hi, came the voice of someone right beside her, as she stood drenched in rain loving every moment of it. Her head turned towards him and the words which she wished to say were lost somewhere between her thoughts and she simply smiled crookedly at him. A man in his 20’s she would say, handsome and shivering like her. You can sit here he signaled with his hands pointing the seat which he had just vacated. In her world, she said something witty and declined the seat stating very clearly that she loved getting wet, she thought this while she walked and sat smiling at him as he moved beside her with only a part of him saved from the water, the water which she loved and the other resting on the pole beside her seat. After a moment of silence as she awkwardly smiled at him while putting her hair back from her face she was caught off guard as he said I work as a software engineer, what do you do? Her eyes flickered, her brain searching the sea of responses she could say, the ones which would pave the way in his mind so he could think that her work was exciting she said in a soft tone with a frown upon her face, a frown she did not wish to have, “I am an accountant” after which she pursed her lips and looked ahead, clenching purse and moving her little finger hidden away from everyone. The bus, for which she and everyone at the stop had been waiting for arrived and in it were people in a number more than half its capacity.
“Well, looks like we will have to wait for a different bus” he said, shrugging, as it drove off leaving them and many others behind away from their families in a rain which was only getting intense as time passed. The street lights which were automatically triggered by the low light came on shining bright as she began to walk with him. A path which she knew but was led by him as he tried to make some sort of conversation which only resulted in a lot of smiles from her. Her thoughts which she loved being alone with were disrupted as she tried very hard to feign an interest in his terribly slow and boring story about his office. Hers were better, the ones she told only to her own mind. Hers were not real. He stopped at a stall, small and clean where you would get coffee and tea, a variety of snacks and most of all it offered protection from the rain. Offering her a tea, which she hated and in her world he was told to get her a coffee while she chatted with the people stuck with them under this island. You don’t talk much he finally said as they were mid way in their tea cups, am I boring you, or did I do something to offend you? His tea let out steam which danced its way before disappearing into thin air, cold winds blew and sheets of rain made their way from the sides of the umbrella. Her silence was a blow for him as he kept his moth shut and after sipping the last remains he began to leave. His head turned back before he did and said, It was nice to meet you, I hope you will be fine. The rain which drenched him as he stepped out from the cover was cold and hard he was to run to a tree and plot his course further the tree which was a small distance away.
She wanted to speak but she watched him leave running in the rain to the shelter of the tree. As her mind fought with itself mulling over the situation and after a long time she listened to her ideal self. In a burst of words originating from the deep layers of her mind they finally bubbled to the surface freeing themselves from her cage she shouted “I hate tea….. I hate tea, I love coffee and getting wet in the rain, I know the way and I...” her eyes teared up and she did not want them to, her body cold from the onslaught of the rain shivered as she fought back her tears. People turned and looked at her, some smiling and the majority annoyed. He ran back to her, without hesitation into the walls of rain looking at her in her eyes “why didn’t you say anything? I’m sorry”. Their eyes locked and her jaw slightly ajar she had no words, to answer his question, no words to tell him why she had stopped saying what she wanted or could remember what it felt like to. “It’s difficult for me, to….”. Would you like some coffee? She smiled, and then laughing she replied yes, I would like that.