Uncanny | Heather Zundel

In my frantic hurry to print off an assignement two hours before it was due, I scrambled through my breakfast and tied my hair back in a hasty fashion before flying out of my room to the library (which had just opened). The morning was clear and bright, fresh even, hardly a cloud in the sky, and I had to pause in its serenity. In the library, I quickly printed off what I needed. My near disaster averted I gently replaced my things and headed for the door -only to be stopped. There, outside, a crowd remained huddled under the entrance. Because at that moment, it was raining.

Raining, and I had not been inside for more than three minutes, but even more uncanny than its sudden appearance, was how it boldly declared its entrance. For you see, hardly a cloud was still in the sky. The sun shone brightly and I saw the blue heavens smiling happily as if at its own private joke, while the rain continued to fall. And not just droplets that you see every once in a while on a strange day. They fell steadily, but not the cold droplets you see in an normal storm. No, these seemed to laugh as they fell, their gowns transparant and gleeful. They looked like diamonds falling, and ones that did not loose their lustor after they hit the grass, for they smiled back as dew against the sun.

I could not help but smile myself, and it was not only fear for my paper that kept me behind the safety of the canopy. I stared up high above me, wondering, thinking, imagining where they could come from. Certainly not from above, for the sky was clear and beautiful. Yet the strange paradox of those brief moments made me see that something so usually contrived as one thing, as seen in a different light (literally) could make it unique and wonderous. Needless to say, I was nearly late for my class for watching so long at a most uncanny sight.