The Last Rain on Cerulia

Date: May 15, 2035

Author: Esi Noire

They told her not to cry. That emotion wasted water.

But on Cerulia, grief was sacred. And she was the last one who remembered how.

Sira stood on the cliffs of the Blue Cleft, where the skies had once wept freely. Her fingers curled around a small silver vial, filled with condensation collected from her own breath. It was the last moisture she could offer. The last ritual of release. The last rain.

The planet had once been lush, oceanic veins cutting across every continent, with clouds thick as stories passed between generations. But when the Trade Guilds arrived, they siphoned the waters into orbiting collectors, turning memory into commodity. And the people? They were told to adapt. Repress. Move forward.

Sira’s parents had tried. Taught her the dry ways: stoicism, calculated resource distribution, emotionless logic. But her grandmother whispered differently…told her that every rainstorm had once had a name. That grief, unspoken, grew sharp and feral in the gut.

So when the last cistern failed, when the final storms no longer came, Sira did what no one else dared. She mourned.

Not with words. With silence. With breath. With one drop from her silver vial spilled onto the parched stone.

And something ancient stirred beneath the ground.

From the dust, an elder bloom pushed through: a plant thought extinct, fed not by water, but by memory. And in that moment, Cerulia shuddered. Rain (real rain) broke through the atmosphere in a single drop. Then another. Then hundreds.

No one cheered. They simply stood, heads bowed, learning to weep again.

Reflection Question:

When was the last time you let yourself truly grieve, without apology, without explanation? What might you water, if you dared to feel fully?