It was cool inside the cafe, though the air had the telltale taste of having been recycled once or twice prior. It was stale and damp, as if it had somehow retained a bit of the moisture from every body that it had passed through. Tristan shivered, suddenly aware of the faintest hint of iron on his tongue. He paid dearly for the acuity of his senses in places like these.
Turning away from the entrance, he settled himself down in an empty seat and pulled his hood down. The seat he chose was carefully selected, tucked in the corner but still possessing a wide view of the front of the place. The table and chairs were both the dull, fake-metal grey of recycled plastic. A cheap and careworn cushion provided a bit of protection from the unforgiving, sanitary hardness of the chair.
Everything in the cafe was equally worn out and sterile. There were two digital boards mounted above the counter, one of which had a white stripe running horizontally across it and the other with a distinctly washed-out tone to its color display. The screens were clearly long past their prime.
A glass case displayed acrylic models of food and pastry, but even those once-perfect copies looked faded and unappetizing. There was a fly buzzing loudly inside the case, butting dumbly against the glass. All in all the place wasn’t what you’d call inviting, but it was nice and cool inside and not terribly crowded.
The temperature alone was a huge relief after the stinging heat outside. Tristan savored it for a moment, ignoring the scent and salty taste of sweat. His own perspiration still beaded in the places where the cloth of his hood had rested against bare skin. Wiping it away absentmindedly, he turned to look out the glass storefront.
The streets were almost empty, the midday heat having long since driven the masses inside and out of the sun. A few children were the notable exception, their skin freckled and hair bleached blonde from too much time spent outside. Two adults, tall and swathed in shapeless white clothing and helmets, watched over the children.
They were imposing figures, each sporting a large gun that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in ages. Tristan knew that was probably not the case; the guns could well have been near new. Nothing managed to stay clean for long when exposed to the constant heat and dust. Nothing and no one, he thought to himself, grimacing.
His own clothing was worn thin and bleached to a uniform shade of near-beige. He remembered when his shirt was first given to him. It had been a soft green then, supple and comfortable and entirely different from the unrecognizable rag it had become. He brushed a bit of dust off his chest and watched , momentarily fascinated, as the particles hung suspended in the light slanting through the window.
“You gonna order anything?” A clipped voice close to his shoulder made him jump. One of the cafe’s employees, an older woman with the unmistakable signs of skin disease taking her face, squinted down at him. Her eyes were milky white, though with age or illness he couldn’t tell. He cleared his throat, wondering if she could even see him.
“Uh, yeah, sorry,” Tristan muttered. He averted his eyes and lifted his arm to let the loose end of his sleeve fall away. The woman held out a small reader and waved it in front of the steel band encircling Tristan’s left wrist. It gave a reedy sound of confirmation and a green LED flashed. “Just a coffee, please.”
“No coffee, sorry. We’ve got chicory.”
Blinking, Tristan glanced back up at her face. She looked back at him with her eyebrows raised impatiently. It took a long moment for her words to sink in. He was miles away, lost in thought. “Oh,” he finally said. And then, more quickly, “yeah that’s fine. Thanks.”
The woman walked wordlessly away and disappeared behind the counter. Behind her she left an unpleasant odor of mingled cheap perfume and rot. She didn’t have long left, Tristan figured. Not long at all. He wiped at his nose unconsciously with a faded green sleeve and turned back towards the window.
The children were gone, and the bodyguards along with them. Clouds had blown in, he could see. The wind was picking up and the dust outside growing restless, floating in hazy drifts down the road. He could even hear it beating the windows and sides of the building if he listened closely, a barrage of tiny grains that made him think longingly of his bed, and sleep.
“Here,” the serving woman had returned, interrupting Tristan’s thoughts for the second time by plunking down a stainless steel cup on the table before him. She stalked off before he could offer a tip.
Just as well, this isn’t even hot. The cup was lukewarm. He took a distracted sip anyways. The taste hardly registered. Or, perhaps more likely, he was just used to the flat, bitter taste of it.
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“What is that!” A voice suddenly cried off to his right. He looked around and saw a number of people staring outside the window. They were all frozen, pointing. More and more people joined in and added their own gasps and whispers. Incredulity echoed around the room.
“Is it real?” Someone, teenaged at most, asked in amazement.
“No way…”
“It can’t be, something must be wrong!”
Tristan followed the commotion and found himself facing the window once more, only this time the children were back.
And there was rain.
The cup fell forgotten from his hand, spilling pale brown across the table.
Outside, the steady pattering of dust had been replaced by a much less familiar, softer noise. He could see it coming down in sheets outside the window, quickly blackening the road to a mess of mud and slick blacktop. It blurred the buildings in the distance and threw up little droplets every time it hit the ground.
Tristan stood slowly, only half aware that the spilled drink had stained his favorite shirt, and placed both hands on the glass of the window. Others around him were doing the same, all staring in transfixed awe at the water pouring down outside.
The two children were laughing and running around in happy circles, stomping in the mud and covering their bodyguards in splatters that the men ignored completely. Both of the guards, guns forgotten at their sides, stared straight up at the sky with their mouths slack.
For a long moment the entire city seemed deathly silent save for the rushing of the sudden downpour. People were frozen in place in the middle of their day, staring out or up or down and gawking in utter confusion at the water that poured from the clouds.
The water that none of them had ever seen before.
It pelted the dirty streets, sloughing off decades of oil and grime and causing the children to slide around in their play. They screamed peals of laughter into the silence while one of their bodyguards now held his hand up in front of his face, watching as water gathered and ran in rivulets down his gloved palm and into his sleeve.
Another man, who had been riding a motorbike when it began, now stood with one foot on the ground and the bike leaning against his thigh, forgotten. His helmet was off and his face was up, his features wild with awe. He blinked rapidly as the rain fell into his eyes but didn’t make any move to look away.
Outside everyone seemed to slowly turn their gaze up, as if trying to spot where all the water was spilling from. Tristan let his palms fall from the glass of the window and crossed to the entrance. He was not alone. Half of the people in the cafe had already made their way outside. An electronic tone sounded behind him as he pushed through the door and stepped out into the rain.
The first thing that hit him was the smell of it. All around it swirled, washing the must and heat from the sky with amazing speed. Something new drifted up from the ground; something rich and clean. He closed his eyes in spite of himself and breathed it in. It was intoxicating. A grin spread on his face.
“Rain?” A wheezy voice from the doorway made him turn. It was the cafe worker again, a joyous expression taking years off her pocked, red face. She had followed him outside.
“Rain…” Tristan whispered. “I think it’s really rain.”
“Real rain?”
He grinned again. Damned if he knew. Part of him wondered if this wasn’t all some vivid dream that he might wake up from at any second. But that smell, that smell that was so rich and so foreign in his nose… Surely his subconscious couldn’t have made that up.
The children were crouching now, splashing water at each others’ faces from the gathering puddles. Their delight was reflected on the face of every other person Tristan could see. And more of them appeared each second.
In doorways, in windows, pouring out of every building. People gathered like ants to a piece of forgotten food. Smiling people, looking at the sky and feeling the rain with unbelieving, grasping hands.
Shocked people blinking at each other with confused grins. Even the occasional frightened person, as horror-struck as if the sky had just begun to collapse.
Another cafe patron, who walked straight past Tristan and out into the street, wordlessly raised his eyebrows at a nearby woman. She shook her head, eyebrows just as high, face openly delighted.
An elderly man grinned over at Tristan from across the road. He had just gotten out of a car and stood laughing, crying, arms spread wide in a gesture of welcoming. Tristan couldn’t help but grin back. The giddiness seemed to spread to everyone the water touched. Rain! Real, actual rain. It was unheard of.
Tristan, dazed by the sight of it, almost didn’t notice the black vehicle coming down the road to his right. He would have missed it entirely if not for the bodyguards across the street suddenly hissing orders to the children. The four of them disappeared in an instant as Tristan looked around for the source of the disturbance. He flinched when he spotted it.
The car was nondescript, but instantly recognizable. The people who had come outside to gape at the rain faded back into the background at the sight of it, slipping around corners and into houses so quickly that it was as if they had melted away. Tristan took a few steps back, the beginnings of fear blooming deep in his stomach, and pushed his way back into the café.
By the time the car approached the window, he was already hunkered back down in his seat, hood pulled up once more, eyes nervously glued to a fresh cup of tepid, chicory tea that the server had brought him. The car slowed to allow whoever was inside to stare out of the tinted windows and into the café. Tristan forced himself to take a slow, steady sip. Be unafraid, he told himself. Don’t show the fear.
After a tense moment, the car moved on, and conversation inside began to pick back up, though noticeably subdued now. Everyone was quite distracted.
Outside, the rain continued.