The Substance

I stepped out on my porch, the rays of the sun beating against the window beckoning me to come outside. The warmth from the morning sun felt comforting but there was something off about the air. Like a storm approaching. I looked up. The sky had a strange hue to it. An odd shade of pink and grey coming together to make a color that's hard to describe. A color you didn't think could exist.

I've never seen a sky like this before.

Curious, I pulled out my phone and checked my weather app. If there was something going on, I would find out soon enough.

🌥 Partly cloudy, turning into mostly sunny skies with a high of 78.

Nothing to indicate any rain whatsoever. As a matter of fact, according to the app. it wasn't supposed to rain for the next few days.

I stepped out further to get another angle of the sky feeling even more perplexed. If it wasn't rain, then what was it?

It was supposed to be a pleasant day this afternoon. I had planned to spend the day outside strolling an outdoor market to enjoy it. I looked at the strange sky before making the final decision to grab my umbrella. If it would rain, I would be ready.

By the time I reached the market, the strange pink and grey hue of the sky looked more vivid and the approaching storm, if that's what it even was, felt more ominous.

I glanced over at a woman picking through some tomatoes.

"The sky looks so strange." I whispered to her.

She broke her gaze from the ripe tomatoes and took a glance at the sky. Her eye brows furrowed in confusion and I knew she must have been as perplexed about the strange colors of the sky as I was.

Instead, she shook her head and turned to me and I knew right then and there that it wasn't the sky she was confused about.

"They're just clouds," she replied.

"But the colors."

"Probably just how the sun is reflecting the clouds." She turned to look at some onions and was not at all concerned about the sky.

I shook my head and moved on.

Just clouds? How the sun is reflecting them? That didn't make any sense.

I looked up at the sky again and reached into my bag for my umbrella for reassurance. Something was going to happen and this was no ordinary storm.

Not even mid-way through my stroll through the market, the first drop hit me. It left a strange sensation as it rolled off my skin. Cool and slick.

I opened my umbrella and could hear the drops pelt against it with lengthy seconds in between each drop.

I looked around. No one seemed to be in a hurry to reach for their umbrella or poncho. As a matter of fact, no one seemed to even notice the strange rain.

I walked over to a bench and saw that the strange substance was just starting to coat it. Like a dusting from winter's last snow. The substance beaded on the bench like morning dew on blades of grass. But these did not look like water droplets.

I hesitated. Was it toxic? Safe to touch? Safe to even breath?

I touched it but just enough to get a sense of its texture. Like the first drop that hit me, it felt cool and slick, almost gel like. I gasped as I touched a bead and it rolled off the bench as though it were a tiny marble. It did not disintegrate into the ground but stayed there.

The only thing stranger than the sky and even stranger than the beaded substance was everyone's lack of reaction.

Even as the substance intensified as it rained down, no one seemed to notice. If anyone did, they didn't care.

I saw the strange gel like substance bead on people's hair, skin, and clothing and it didn't even bother them.

No one even seemed to care as they sat in the strange substance that beaded on the benches.

A man passed by me and gave a friendly wave. "Gorgeous out today, isn't it!"

I watched the strange substance hit his shoulders and roll off. I didn't reply. I couldn't reply. I was paralyzed by disbelief.

The air began to warm. The change in temperature was so noticeable, it made me take another look at the sky. I couldn't decide which was stranger? The sky when it had an odd hue of pink and grey or how it suddenly returned to normalcy, the strange hue of it fading as quickly as a rainbow.

And then a realization hit me.

The substance!

I hurried over to the closest bench. It was still damp as if there had been a light rain shower not long ago. But there were no beads of any strange substance.

I looked at the grass. The blacktop. Even tree barks and branches. No evidence of the cool slick beaded substance anywhere as the afternoon sun beamed down.

A woman passed me and smiled. "We couldn't ask for a better day!"