Last night, I slept in my study with the window open.
Ella, my cat, curled in my lap as I listened to the rain from my leather chair. I moved in and out of sleep, and each time I woke to shift positions, two things happened.
The first is that Ella would get up, circle, and find a new nook in my lap to sleep in.
The second is that I would try to find the rain.
The rain was there – of course, it was a hurricane after all – but I found myself reaching through my sleep-addled brain to listen to it. As if hearing the rain as it hit the trees and creek outside were a touchstone I needed.
(that I put up with a cat in my lap all night tells me that I am somewhat attached to the beast, as I usually avoid anything that will affect my sleep; that I found myself searching for the rain tells me that I spent too much time as a child playing in the rain and may be a re-incarnated rain god)
No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay
Wait… Ella? not Lady Ella, tell me it ain’t so.