Star in the Rain

     Honestly, he had only happened upon her little stage by chance. It was the fourth night of the music festival, the second to last, just two hours from closing. He wasn’t overly fond of indie, but he had paid for the all-access pass, and he intended to make the most of it. The final set on his radar for the day had ended shortly after sunset, and instead of going home, he decided to check out the rest of the festival. He had been expecting hardcore punk acts or garage bands, some small-time groups with three self-produced EPs. A young woman in a white dress had been the last thing he expected to see.

     She wasn’t beautiful. Well, she wasn’t not beautiful, but it wasn’t the kind of beautiful that needed to be revealed with leggings or crop tops; the kind that a younger person might see and think to himself, “I hope I get someone like her.” It was really a subtle kind of beauty, a hidden beauty, one that needed to catch the light at just the right angle to be revealed.

     If he could have described her in one word, it would have been mousy. He couldn’t put his finger on just why, but it was there. Maybe it was the fact that she was wearing glasses and a simple white dress to perform. Maybe it was the way the spotlight made her hair seem to glow, or the way that she closed in on herself while singing: eyes closed, head bowed, slender fingers curled in a delicate fist by her side as she spilled her heart on the stage beneath the starry sky.

     Her voice was deeper than her appearance suggested; smoky, almost. She sat on a little black stool down center, accompanied only by a single pianist. He stood at the back of the small crowd, still mid-stride, listening to her voice gently rise and fall as though she herself was a finely tuned instrument. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to stay and watch or keep moving when she opened her eyes and met his. Time seemed to stop for just that moment, her eyes boring into his skull as her breathy vibrato hit him hard, and as quickly as her emotions swept over him, they disappeared.

     In that moment, the skies opened with a massive peal of thunder. A small crowd he hadn’t noticed quickly began to disperse as the rain came, but she didn’t move from her perch. Rather, her eyes closed as she launched into the next verse, the raindrops running off her shoulders seeming to deepen the intensity of her voice. He drew his hood over his head and began to make his way away from the little stage, leaving the girl to console the Earth she had moved to tears.