A Wise Hope In Our World

Stopping the Rain

Riyo was drenched in just a few seconds. There was a warning for a flash flood, and if he wasn't in a classroom that was lifted a foot and a half off the ground, then the room would have been flooded with water. The water was already almost three inches up off the ground, and it was dumping rain like nobody had ever seen before. Local weather reports were saying that it was more likely that the rain wouldn't stop anytime between now and the next 12 hours, and that they could get as much as 2 feet of flood water. It was bad, and everybody knew it. The odds were most definitely against Riyo, which is why they all questioned him. 

Riyo stepped out onto the bridge, and looked out toward the creek and saw that the water level was notably rising over a period of only 4 minutes. There were endless ripples of water attacking each other and fading away, but there was no clear pattern that the stream was running in. The force of all of the run down water and the falling water made it so that the stream wasn't flowing steadily in one direction, but instead was not flowing at all. It was more of a really long lake now, and was just rising in water level. 

Riyo thought for a while. He must have been out in the rain for almost ten minutes now, and he was soaked to the point where he could have likely caught hypothermia. He could just imaging the class still laughing at him for five or six minutes, then them all going dead silent after not seeing his return to the classroom. He pictured their worried stares, and all of their feelings of guilt rising in the air. He could almost feel it from here. They were all guilty of being cruel to him, yet here he was out here, and everybody else thought that he was already dead. 

As a matter of fact, Riyo didn't feel anything at all. Literally. Although he was a little numb, he didn't feel any pain either, and he didn't feel unusually cold. He had spent endless night sleeping outside in weather that could have gotten as low as just 3 degrees Fahrenheit, and yet he's still alive and running right now. The temperature outside didn't really bother him, but he was dripping wet. Well, at least this pair of clothes were close to clean. 

He thought that if he put his mind to it, he could probably make it stop raining. He concentrated, and stood there for quite some time. He lost all sense of sight, sound, and feeling. He couldn't move at all, he was so focused in on trying to become the rain in the skies and move away from this town. It all seemed absurd, but he had written about this before in his journal. 

"Humans are beings that do not typically spend much time thinking about their potential. They're always bringing themselves down, not believing in themselves. It's been said that a human inflicts 10 times more self harm than harm inflicted from other humans, which is really saying something. People need to not doubt themselves, they can get lots of things accomplished if only they believe. Even manipulating the elements is possible for someone who believes, although that has not even been done by anyone in the world yet." - Riyo 

He had written in his journal before about believing, and he thought about what it is he could do if he believed. He thought about the clouds moving, and the rain ceasing to exist. The rain started to slow, and Riyo started losing concentration on what it was that he was trying to accomplish. He thought about how he could make it stop raining, but he always has that small bit of doubt buried deep inside of him. It was a humans greatest enemy- his own emotions and thoughts. Riyo had to learn to ignore himself, and he thought about how he COULD make the rain disappear. How it would end the bullying in his life. How he could finally be an accepted member of the people around him. How he could perform a miracle just because he believed that he could. 

The rain continued to slow, and Riyo had felt his success around him. He opened his eyes, then looked down at the creek in front of him. He also looked around himself, and couldn't help but notice that there weren't any leaves anywhere in sight of him, except for one. Flying by his face, there was a blood red leaf that he could tell was from one of the trees from the park that was a few blocks away from the school. Only a single leaf was there, and as it traveled the rain continued to slow. The blood read leaf had finally left the park, but Riyo didn't know if that was exciting or if it was bothering him, as if he wanted the leaves to stay in the park. In a way, Riyo felt bad for feeling bothered by the fact that it had escaped. Riyo thought about how the leaf had performed a miracle, and how the leaf was the only leaf in sight that had made it out of the park. It was more than likely that the other leaves were still in the park, and had not made it out of the strange outside force that was keeping it there. 

Riyo smiled, and caught the leaf on his open hand. Here the leaf was, symbolizing how miracles were possible. He stayed there for a while longer, looking out at the creek in front of him. He liked this creek, and he enjoyed watching it once again return to flowing to wherever in the distance that it flowed to. He couldn't just keep the red leaf from going out and exploring the world, so he dropped the leaf over the stream. The leaf didn't drop into the stream, but floated above it all the way to where Riyo could no longer see the leaf, and the stream turned out away from the school. 

Riyo walked back to his classroom, his clothes completely soaked. On his way up, he took a look at the sky and made some notable observations about what it was like ten minutes ago to what it was like now. There was now clear skies, with puffy white clouds. The sun was shining brightly, and the temperature rose fairly quickly. It was now a great day outside, and everything seemed like it had been like this all day except for what was now four inches of rain water on the walkways of the campus. The entire town was flooded, so it wasn't only this one specific area in the town that was really bad. 

The rain had stopped. Over the nearby hills, you couldn't find one trace of a single rain cloud. It was completely empty, and the weather had just changed. The clouds were nowhere to be seen, although it felt like the extra rain that had disappeared with the rain clouds had just dropped out into the sky and became a gas once again, as it felt very wet outside(aside from the water along the pathways!) 

Riyo walked back to the classroom, and opened the classroom door. His classmates stared at him, and they all breathed out really heavily. They all thought that he was dead, but he had actually stopped the rain. There weren't any windows in that building, so they didn't know that the rain outside had completely stopped. The most popular kid in the classroom got up and began to approach Riyo. 

"Hey man, you shouldn't go out there and do something stupid like that. We thought you would have died of hypothermia by now." She said while coming up to usher him back inside. 

"I'd never die of hypothermia. I sleep outside, no matter how warm or how cold it is outside." Riyo responded. 

"Okay, but enough with the 'stop the rain' nonsense. It's crazy. You can't do tha..." She started, but couldn't finish her sentence. She looked out the door to what was behind Riyo and noticed that it was completely bright outside. No sign of rain at all... "Oh my god..." She finished. 

She turned around and told the entire class that it was no longer raining outside. 

"Doubt is a humans greatest weakness. Learn to overcome it... Uh..." Riyo started. 

"Sierra." She interrupted. 

"Sierra." Riyo finished. "Learn to overcome doubt and you can do pretty much anything. However, it's not as easy as it sounds." Riyo finished. 

The entire class was already up and outside, with their shoes flooded with water because they were shocked by the fact that it was no longer raining. 

"How did you do it Riyo?" Some people asked. 

"Where's your proof that you were the one who did this?" Some others asked. It would create a conflict in the classroom that would last forever, because some people listened to him and eliminated their feelings of doubt, while others only started to doubt him more. Perhaps they were just jealous. 

The word of what Riyo did spread through the school really quickly, and the side saying he was the one who stopped the rain spread a whole lot faster than the side that said he had no proof showing that he was the one who stopped the rain. 

Riyo knew that whatever came next was either going to be much more pleasant then his life before now, or that it would be absolute hell. He also had to consider what the invaders would do about this, because he assumed that the intense rain here was probably connected to the invaders abilities to control the elements. He knew that soon, he would get a visit from someone that was not from Earth. However, he had his ways to stall out the encounter for as long as he could. After all, he was never in a set place at a set time. He was walking around all the time to different places around town.