Ebony sat in the swaying grass, watching the sun disappear behind the clouds covering the expanse of suburban neighborhoods below with a deep haze. Clouds turned an angry charcoal, mirroring her mood and foretelling of a storm coming, not a small one.
The wind turned cold and Ebony laid back, resting on the stiff ground, her gleaming white skin contrasting with dark, earthy tones of the small slice of the world around her and her own dull clothes. It was as if she had a front-row view of the universe's scheming, and everyone in the uniform houses below were simply extras in a film, waiting to bend to the will of their director. Sometimes, she liked to pretend she was the narrator in such a film, claiming to know everything about everyone and laughing at their idiotic, ignorant actions. Truly, it was too bad that she was just an insignificant little blip, wishing she were more.
Rain started falling now, just a light kiss of water here and there, on a cheek, on a finger. It stung slightly with the force the wind recklessly blew into it, but Ebony made no move to leave or shield herself. Endless clouds, at least three times the size of her house, pried themselves open further, allowing water to fall thicker and faster, wind skewing the water in an angle so it contacted her face directly with a harsh prick. After a while, she didn't know whether or not the water on her face was mixed with thick blood, a substance so coveted that there were events held specifically to extract it from the bodies of whoever is willing, if only to turn around and put it into other vessels. Ebony forced her eyes to break from their entranced state and immediately cut herself off from the intense visual and physical stimulation, blinking furiously to dispel the water disorienting her. Hands came up to her face but didn't come away red. Ebony didn't know whether or not to be disappointed.
Rain still bit into her skin, little jabs into an insignificant pin-cushion, and she still heard the downpour making contact with tall strands of grass around her, swiftly sliding down the blades until the droplets reached the ground, causing it to grow muddy under her figure. Someone was probably looking for her by now, searching for a trivial soul in a vast universe, a grain of sand on a long stretch of beach. They wouldn't find her, but something clicked in her brain with the thought, and she jolted upright, violently coughing up water that had found a home in her lungs.
Momentarily, the sky cleaved in half with a flash so bright it left a mark in her vision that could be seen even with her eyes closed. Ebony considered returning to the house, nestled in a row of others identical to it, that she and her family called home. After deliberating on the idea for a moment, she decided against it. If she returned home, the next logical step would be to finish working on various history assignments, to learn more about the select few who hadn't been just another person in the course of things. What she wouldn't give to be one of them, to not be completely insignificant, in life nor in death.
Torrents of water now obscured her view of the valley, as lightning continually lit up the world in quick bursts, pursued by loud rumbles in quick succession, making the ground under her ache and groan with energy. Ebony wished she could be absorbed into the ground, to sink deeper and deeper until she became an integral part of the strongest power she knew, something she could feel in her bones, something significant.
Importance was something Ebony craved, like a drug, a dirty substance cultivated in the depths and dark alleyways of her soul. Everyone around her felt that need too, to some extent. Some had told her they had found it, all she had to do was emulate them, and she would be on her way to complete fulfillment. Others proclaimed that she didn't need to be important, and just told her to go on living the life she'd been blessed with (of course, according to them, she had been "blessed" by one incredibly significant figure, one they somehow tended to worship). She knew that none of these people really understood her, no one knew the kind of part she wished to play in her eternity.
Ebony felt almost resigned, the storm inside her subsiding, replaced with a typical greyscale world that dripped with some feeling she couldn't explain, but that resonated deep inside her. For some reason, she felt the storm outside would come to a halt, as the one within herself had, but the world kept shaking and the weather raged on, eternal.
