A Tale of Lost Memories and the Woman Who Carried the Rain
Pike didn’t mean to steal it.
But when the shopkeeper whispered, "That one’s not for sale—it’s got someone else’s weather stuck in it," her fingers closed around the handle anyway.
The moment she stepped outside, the first raindrop hit her palm—and she tasted salt.
Why am I crying? she wondered.
Then the memory hit.
1: The Rain That Remembers
Eleanor had never seen this cobblestone street before. Yet her body knew it: the way her heels avoided the cracked stone near the gutter, the automatic turn toward a blue door now boarded up.
The umbrella trembled in her grip.
A man passing by gasped. "That’s old Madeline’s brolly! She vanished in the ’63 storm—"
Another raindrop. Another flash:
A woman in a red coat running, the umbrella clutched like a weapon. A shout. A hand snatching the crow-headed handle—
Eleanor blinked. The street was empty again.
The umbrella wasn’t just holding rain.
It was holding someone else’s last night alive.
2: The Detective Who Hated Water
Silas Weatherly (grandson of the shop’s owner, and self-proclaimed "investigator of atmospheric anomalies") found Eleanor vomiting into a storm drain.
"Ah," he said, eyeing the umbrella. "You’ve met Madeline."
Over terrible coffee, he explained:
- Certain objects absorb emotional weather—the storms people carry inside.
- Madeline Cress, a journalist, had been investigating a corrupt mayor’s ties to a shipwreck.
- She’d last been seen heading to the docks with her umbrella and a notebook.
"That umbrella’s the only witness to what happened," Silas said. "And it’s picked you to testify."
Eleanor’s hands shook. "Why me?"
Silas leaned in. "Because you’re in the memories. And you don’t remember that, do you?"
3: The Drowning Memory
Each raindrop brought fractured scenes:
- A ledger hidden in a ship’s hull ("30 children, cargo hold B")
- Madeline’s voice hissing "They’re smuggling orphans!"
- A hand shoving her toward the harbor’s edge—
Then, the worst one:
Eleanor, age six, screaming as a woman in a red coat shoved her into a lifeboat. "Take her! Don’t let them find her!"
The umbrella wasn’t just showing her Madeline’s death.
It was showing her mother.
4: The Mayor’s Dry Bones
The current mayor still lived in the same seaside mansion. When Eleanor and Silas broke in, they found the ledger—and a collection of umbrellas labeled with dates.
"He collects them," Silas realized. "Trophies from people who ‘disappeared’ in storms."
The mayor found them first.
"Ah," he said, smiling at Eleanor’s umbrella. "You look just like her."
Then he opened a white umbrella—one that emitted not rain, but a suffocating dry wind.
Silas collapsed, skin cracking like parched earth.
Eleanor did the only thing she could.
She opened Madeline’s umbrella indoors.
5: The Storm Inside the House
The unleashed downpour flooded the mansion:
- Raindrops punched through paintings, revealing hidden safes.
- The mayor’s prized porcelain dolls melted into children’s faces—the orphans from the ledger.
- Silas gasped back to life, gulping water from the air.
And in the eye of the storm stood Madeline, her form woven from rain and memory.
"Hello, Ellie," she whispered.
The mayor lunged—and Madeline’s umbrella snapped shut, trapping him inside its folds. When it reopened, only a handful of salt remained.