WHAT WAS THAT?

Woke up startled this morning and wasn't quite sure why; there was something about the atmosphere... something about the air... the environment... the... an intangible something I couldn't quite identify was floating unnamed in my dawning consciousness, like a word I used to know, the sound of it or the meaning... maybe the edge of a song, the color of a name, a voice from long ago... it hovered just beyond the reach of my... ear. My ear?

Then it came to me and all at once I knew, as surely as one knows there's no more beer: it wasn't raining! The sudden cessation of constantly cascading water from an overloaded sky onto a sodden earth had ceased, and the abrupt forestwide blast of noiselessness had awakened me like a cannon going off in my doorway. I could hear birds out in the rainlessness, a lot of nonplussed chirping! I noted the quizzical tones of cicadas savoring the new phenomenon of initial dryness and the absence of competing white noise! New harmonies burgeoned!

Then I saw something odd among the leaves of the trees outside, that was also falling on the floor, then the walls, it was gold; no, it was warm and insubstantial, it was sunshine! I remember sunshine from when I was a kid, and here it was again!

Then more clouds came and it started re-raining so I went back to sleep.