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Language:
English
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Published:
2011-05-02
Words:
289
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
1
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164

Rain in Babylon

Summary:

Shetiger prompted me with the Dreifuss family and "rain" (2010).

Notes:

Set during Season 2 of Carnivale, specifically The Road to Damascus. Spoils Season 1's Babylon (maybe) and Pick A Number (for sure).

Work Text:

When Dora Mae was a little girl, she hated the rain. The damp would make her hair puff up like cotton balls and there would be no end to Libby's teasing. She always did like how green everything looked afterwards though.

When she grew older and started to recognize how rare rainfall was becoming, when people's lives blew away in the dust and her mouth was always gritty, she started standing outside and letting the rain wash over her. She loved the feel her clothes plastered to her skin by something other than sweat, loved the cold drops falling into her open, upturned mouth. Never mind that Libby's teasing was now about how many flies she could catch in that big mouth of hers.

Her fingers, always clean here, trace the track of a drop through years of accumulated dust. This is the first rain she's seen in a dog's age but unless one of them takes her out she will have to watch it from the dry side of a grimy glass pane. She thinks about her flimsy dancing outfits, and about how Libby and their Mama are probably hanging them out to be refreshed as Daddy would say. She thinks about Gecko, who would not want to be wet but who would scamper from his tent to hers to brush down her mess of curls. He would complain that a creature like himself should not have to suffer the indignity of rain, but he would always lick a few precious drops from the back of his knuckles.

She feels a hand on her shoulder, dark with coal dust, and as she turns away from the window she thinks that it probably isn't even raining wherever they are.