Wore on did the Day’s eagerness to please. Mild temperatures, singing birds, and glittery foliage met the senses on every front, as an interviewee dresses to impress. Her interview would not last long.

She didn’t bother with the clouds. Down came the deluge, drowning the endlessly-deep blue skies, snowy clouds of fluff, and pallid day-moon in an impenetrable, moist curtain. Nature’s frustration released as a torrent spared no scavenging squirrel, forcing their fastidious foraging to move all the more frenetically lest they be engulfed by a parking lot ocean or storm drain rip current. First came the slow taps, then, in a roaring crescendo, the pounding of a million drops on a million surfaces echoing in my ear, overcoming entirely the Sunday serenity. The detonation of a single drop into a multitude of spattered droplets attacking every angle dusted the fabric of my shorts, sitting atop the fibers as though disappointed by the quality of the landing surface and refusing to reach further in protest.

Where she had initiated a skirmish, she escalated into an invasion, hurling angry droplets under the roof and inside my balcony and forcing a retreat. My leafy friend was afforded no such luxury, absorbing the relentless pummeling in brave fashion as I could only watch. Unceremoniously and indiscriminately, the watery lashing reached thunderstruck joggers and soughing traffic, a further scourge to the urbanity suffocating the earth. Coated in a layer of punishment, the once-proud loam turned timid and dejected, grayed and sullen for the transgression of being the floor of a fruitful planet. The parking lot ocean came to be after all, bestrewn with a matrix of a thousand watery pimples seen clearly in the soft white glow of a library light pole and raging into a nearby drain.

But Day knew. And she relented to bring forth a gift instead.

Where she unleashed an inundation, she birthed a verdured land. The earthy dampness of the freshly-water land added a resplendently bejeweled appearance to match with the glistening of the accumulated droplets in the light of the setting sun. The air hung thick as a reminder of the life-giving tumult, and as I returned to my seat, the clouds and moon did likewise. The blissfully ignorant world, having never stopped its work in the first place, never gave the transformation a second thought because it simply went unnoticed. No one admired the resiliency of my friend Tree, tested yet again and successful as many time and offering encouragement to his brethren by his example, and perhaps the windshield wipers comprised the only change of routine. I found in Nature’s awakening a new question in myself:

Must Day so betray itself and Nature become so infuriated to give such a gift as themselves?