The hush of rain as it whispered down onto the long grass muffled the sounds of the cattle shifting, ruminating, the water running sheets off their black coats as they laid low in the field. His white speckled chestnut mare made no complaints either; he'd first found her in a blizzard. Compared to that, this weather was calm, contemplative.

Behind him on Snowy's back, his passenger was pondering, deep thoughtful eyes peering up from underneath her parasol. She was swinging her little legs, riding sidesaddle, her faded denim skirt and two long black braids getting soaked.

"Ever looked real long up through the droplets?" she wondered. "Like as the water forms a pillar 'round you. Like as you look long enough, maybe you get sucked up to heaven."

"More so when the thunder comes down and strikes us dead on account of that rig you're carryin'," he agreed.

She shrugged, her umbrella bobbing with the motion. "Can't be helped. And lightning." He gave her a questioning glance. "Lightning strikes," she clarified, "not thunder."

The air was sweet and fresh, the mist splashing over them, running down the back of his neck from his bedraggled hair, cool and welcome after nearly being broiled earlier in the day. He missed this, he realized: the wild untamed storms that rushed over the land as often as sunlight, the company while he watched the herd. He missed how when there wasn't rain, he was able to see past the fenceposts in the far distance to the horizon, the sky open and seeming endless above him.

"What'd you bring that for, anyway?" he asked, sounding younger than he had in a long time. Like a boy, maybe around fourteen. "Ain't doin' you much good."

"Don't want my book to get wet." As if to punctuate the statement, he heard her refresh the page with a couple beeps, and he smiled. Ever since she learned how to read she loved to quote passages to him, and as his chores gr