The rain hit hard, like a thousand small hands trying to wake me. It slapped my face and washed the blood from my cheek.
For a wild second the world smelled clean — rain and wet concrete and the small sharp scent of mint.
My heart thudded in my ears. I lay still and let the drops fall, letting them stitch the dark into something I could see.
Light came back in pieces. Not much, at first — just lines and shapes, the black of the road, the dull red of a shop sign, a bright flash from the phone of someone running past. Then the green of a tree, the grey of a wall, the black of a shoe. The rain was a curtain and behind it the world was clearer than I had ever felt.
My breath hitched. My hands trembled on the broken cane. I looked up. The sky had split open and the world looked wet and ne
