Almost

I.

Sora stands at the window, looking out. I creep up behind her and put my hands over her eyes. She sighs and says my name in an absent-minded way, arms stiff at her sides. Letting go, I ask her what’s wrong. She turns, blinking, and jerks her chin at the sky. I look.

Something silver is falling.

II.

We stand at the window the next day. Sora has her arms folded, glaring outside with her lips tight. I lean my forehead against the glass, having cleared a circle away in the condensation so I can see.

It looks almost like rain, the whatever-it-is. Almost, but not enough. And in being so almost-but-not-enough, it’s almost more disturbing than a random liquid would be. It’s rain put together by somebody who’s never seen it. The hollows of the yard are filled with the stuff, and it’s spilling over onto the sidewalk. I ask her if it could just be mercury or something, and she gives me a moment of her glare before returning it to the view. Risking a shrug at her inflexible back, I walk to the kitchen and get a glass of water; suddenly I’m thirsty.

III.

The yard is soggy; Sora and I venture a few steps out onto it, huddled under umbrellas, before retreating to the house again. It feels nasty sloshing against our shoes, weirdly slimy and clinging. For some reason, we can’t bring ourselves to rinse our footwear, instead leaving them to languish on the back porch. I peel my socks off with the tips of my fingers, and I still feel the need to scrub my hands afterwards.

The almost-rain is still dripping, oozing, from the sky—it’s just viscous enough that I can’t call what it’s doing “falling.” Everything outside glistens from a coating of it, even the car. Sora makes several pointed remarks about how she wanted a house with a garage, but I’m too busy checking the window seams for leaks to be irritated.

IV.

Every container we own is placed under a leak now, and we’ve only managed to cover the kitchen and bedroom, sealing off rest of the house. Sora and I tip around the pots and pans as if they were landmines.

Sora sits on the bed, legs pulled close to her chest, frowning at the steady streams that have perforated our roof. We still aren’t sure how it’s getting in; wincing, I climbed onto the roof and checked for holes, some sign that it was toxic and had eaten through, but nothing. As far as I can tell, it’s simply extremely good at insinuating itself through the tiniest of spaces. She spends most of the day just glaring at the strange weather. She says that she can’t help it. I suspect it doesn’t help that we’ve been stuck in here together for a week.

We can’t bear to call it rain, or anything stemming from the word, so Sora has christened it “almost.” It’s a bit of an insult to me; she claimed that whenever I slept, I was talking, obsessing over the idea that it was almost rain, almost wet, almost alien—just almost. It does suit the stuff, though.

As far as we can tell, the almost doesn’t seem to be dangerous. It doesn’t hurt. We just can’t stand to touch it. Several times we tried to go for the car, but the first drop of the almost that fell on our skin, and we sprinted back for the shower. It’s so insidious that the most elaborate weather-proofing does no good, and we are compelled to wash, trapping us at home again. Not that I think it would matter; it seems to be everywhere.

V.

Sora’s gone. I don’t know how, or when. We’d been fighting for days, in the pettiest ways. She left my favorite book next to one of the overflowing pots of almost, so it was ruined twice. I poured a cup of it over her feet so that she had to clean. But I still would have thought she would have taken me with her.

VI.

My bathwater this morning had a silvery sheen to it.

VII.

When you get used to it, the almost is. . . well, almost like water. Tastes a bit odd. It’s almost a flavor I can identify, but not quite. Sometimes I pretend that Sora didn’t really left, that she just discovered what I did, that the almost isn’t all that bad. Perhaps she just. . . dissolved in the night. That would be good, I think.

I lift a glass to my lips and take another sip. Almost good.