Chapter Two: A Boy Named Rain
"Some people drift into your life like fog—quiet, shapeless, and full of secrets."
The boy did not return the next morning.
Nor the one after.
Lyra found herself walking the cliffs out of habit—and, she hated to admit, out of hope. Each day began the same: she would rise before dawn, wrap herself in her father's worn coat, and tread the dew-laced path where the sky kissed the sea. And each day ended with nothing but silence, the wind moaning against the rocks like a mourning hymn.
On the sixth morning, she saw it—a scrap of parchment, folded neatly, caught in the crooked fingers of the rusted iron fence. Her breath caught. The wind had nearly stolen it, but something kept it anchored. A stone. Or fate.
She knelt and opened the note with trembling fingers. The ink had run slightly, blurred at the edges like a voice underwater.
You shouldn't look for me, Lyra.
Some things are better left unremembered.
— R.
Her heart slowed, then quickened. How did he know her name? She hadn't told him.
And he hadn't given his either.
She read the note over and over until her hands grew cold. "R." Was it even his real initial? Was this all a game?
Back at the cottage, she tucked the letter beneath the loose floorboard under her bed—where she kept her mother's locket and her father's broken compass. Things she couldn't throw away. Things that didn't work anymore, but still mattered.
That night, Lyra could not sleep. The wind had changed. The sea was louder.
Something was coming.
The next afternoon, the sky thickened with clouds, heavy and dark like ink spilled across parchment. Rain tapped the windows softly at first, then harder—like impatient fingers. Lyra watched the storm from the upstairs hallway, chin resting on the wooden windowsill.
She didn't expect him to appear. But somehow, she wasn't surprised when he did.
There, beneath the willow tree near the cliffs, stood the boy. Hair drenched. Still as stone.
She didn't even think. She ran barefoot through the wet grass, the cold biting her ankles, her breath rising in clouds.
"You're soaked," she said when she reached him, chest heaving.
"I like the rain," he replied without turning.
"Most people go inside."
"I'm not most people."
There was a pause—one full of questions Lyra didn't know how to ask.
"You never told me your name," she said softly.
He looked at her then. Really looked. His eyes were grey, storm-grey. Full of something unspoken.
"You can call me Corin," he said.
"Is that your real name?"
He tilted his head slightly. "Does it matter?"
Lyra frowned, crossing her arms. "Why are you here?"
He blinked slowly, as if the answer were too difficult to explain. "I come when it rains. It makes everything quieter."
"You left a note."
"I know."
"You knew my name."
Corin looked away, jaw clenched. "Your father once saved my life. Long ago."
Lyra felt as if the ground shifted slightly beneath her.
"I didn't know he saved anyone."
"He didn't talk about it."
She took a step closer. "Why are you really here, Corin?"
His lips parted, as if he might confess something. But then he smiled—a tired, sad smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"You ask too many questions."
"And you never give answers."
He laughed. A single, breathless sound. "That's why we work."
They stood there, two strangers beneath a weeping sky. The wind tangled Lyra's hair around her face, but she didn't move. Corin reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a silver chain—worn and tarnished. A small, charred ring hung from it.
"She wore this," he murmured.
"Who?"
"My sister."
Silence dropped between them like a stone in water.
Lyra's voice was quiet. "I'm sorry."
He nodded, barely. "So am I."
Before she could speak again, he turned.
"I won't always be around," he said. "But I'll find you when it rains."
And then he was gone—fading into the mist like a dream that slips away the moment you wake.
That night, Lyra lit a candle beside her notebook and wrote beneath the earlier entries:
There's something hollow in him, like a house with all the windows broken.
But even the wind seems to know his name.
Corin.
A boy made of rain and memory.
I want to know his storm.