Dancing Water

 “But it’s raining….”

At the next desk, another colleague shrugs, “ I think that’s the point”

And down the corridor she flies, grabbing the hand of a friend, “Come on!”.  Spun into the whirl of her determination, he stumbles and follows as she heads through the foyer, a whirlwind drawing towards her everybody’s attention.

“She’s mad,” someone murmurs.

“She’s Pagan,” is the response.

The receptionist laughs, “If you ask her, she’d tell you it’s a goddess thing.”

And they all stand up and watch as she skips through the doors, pushing off her shoes on the step, and runs out onto the tarmac of the car park, barefoot in the rain. And what rain! It’s been three weeks since the last drops fell, and now it pours and pours, the ground beneath her teeming, instantly flooded silver-white with dancing water, alive with the storm, and with her arms open, her face lifted to the skies, she sings, whirling round and round.

Her friend stands half sheltered by the office entrance, smiling with wonder at her behaviour, barely able to hear her voice through the clamour of the rain, longing to join her, to walk through this intangible barricade that keeps him tight and upright in his guise of an ordinary sensible man, knowing how embarrassed he would be to do otherwise.

Drenched, she turns towards him, her clothes clinging, sodden, her hair plastered down, her face glowing with life. She looks so completely vibrant, shining, wet and free, and she holds out her hand to him, calling out an invitation, words he cannot hear. And in that moment, uneasy and excited, he sees her as a wild force, as Aphrodite, as temptation and delight, as complete and somehow apocalyptic freedom.

And he wonders, amazed,-- Why doesn’t she look foolish?

Emma Restall Orr