Rain Story

A short story based on this photograph of a dog in the rain.

The dog stood in a field, majestic. Grass was beneath him and the sky was above. It wasn’t raining yet, which is a hint that later it will be. His fur was brown and white. He was thinking about the past few minutes of his life, which were, usually, the only minutes he could recall with any sort of clarity. (There was a study published recently about dogs who retained episodic-like memories for a full hour, but he was not one of those dogs, usually, which is just fine.) (Sometimes he would remember things for longer.)

Across the way, the dog saw humans. They were yelling and crying and they looked very upset. He took note of them briefly before beginning to trot around, thinking about when he was trotting around before and the feel of the grass on his paws.

Suddenly, the dog got the urge to dig. He dug and dug and dug, tearing up the grass, which was not a “good boy” thing to do, but no one was around to judge him other than the preoccupied humans and they were minding their own business just like you should mind yours. Eventually, he saw a light peeking though the dirt. Oh my god. What? A light underground? What…could it be? He’d never come across anything like this before while digging, and, frankly, neither had any human — this was very unprecedented, a light underground. He dug a bit more until the light was so powerful it blinded his eyes and warmed his paws. Through his dug hole, he heard the barking of dogs…but he could tell the dogs weren’t any dogs he ever knew. What were these strange voices, calling to him? He held his paw over the light, hesitating.

Then it began to rain. The humans who were so upset were even more upset now, the dog noticed. Then he got back to his day. He felt he rain coat his fur and it felt chilly and heavy but good. He looked up to the sky to feel the rain better on his face, and feel the rain better he did, just like in the photo on which this story is based. As much as he could feel anything, which I’m not sure is how much, he felt happiness.

(He doesn’t have any sort of real brain.)

The dog never found out what the underground light was.