Raindrop's Arc

Chapter 18 of 20

The stage was wide enough now, but the drops kept coming. Raindrop swept the ribbons high and the front tier arced. He swept them low and the back tier answered. The pattern held. But every wave he called brought two more waves behind it. The sky above the stage was still thick with drops waiting to fall. He glanced at the cloud floor under his feet. A hairline crack ran from the front lip to the middle tier. Another split the boards near where Thundar Stormstrider had set the last brick. The stage was carrying more weight than it was built for. If he kept calling drops, it would break. If he stopped calling drops, the ones already in the air would fall wrong and scatter into the dark. He needed to end it. Not stop it. End it. A finale that sent every drop off the stage in one clean movement, so nothing was left hanging. He had never planned that part. Thundar stood at the back edge, arms loose at his sides. The lightning under his skin was almost gone. "Floor won't hold much longer," he said. "I know." "Then finish it." "I don't know how." Thundar looked at him. "Storms end by leaving. Not by stopping." Raindrop turned that over. The drops didn't need a last beat. They needed a direction out. Nigel Rainweaver stepped up beside him from the wings. He held out a second bundle of ribbons, shorter than the first, tied at one end. "Split the signal," he said. "One hand pulls them up. One hand sends them out." "Out where?" "The pond. Where they were always going." Raindrop took the second bundle. He weighed both in his hands. Then he lifted the long ribbons high and the short ribbons low, angled toward the open sky past the stage edge. He pulled the long ribbons up in a slow sweep. Every drop on the stage rose with the movement, lifting off the cracked boards in one sheet. He held them there a beat. Two beats. He snapped the short ribbons outward. The whole sheet of drops peeled off the stage and arced through the open sky in one long sweeping curve, paths crossing mid-fall, thousands of drops moving as one shape. He felt the ripple run through it end to end. Not three seconds this time. The whole arc. The drops still hanging in the air above the stage tilted and followed. The last of them cleared the boards. The cracked floor settled. The stage was empty. Raindrop lowered both hands. His arms were shaking. Thundar sat down heavily on the back edge. "That's a finale." Nigel watched the drops disappear toward the pond below. "They're still falling," he said. "You just gave them somewhere to go." Raindrop nodded. The stage was clear. But above the clouds, a new wave of drops was already gathering, waiting for a signal he had not yet called.