Simple Sweet Stuff

She stared out at the rain, listening to it fall like the tiny pitter-pat of little feet on the sturdy slate roof. This weather was her favorite of all weathers. This weather made fun little imaginings come to life in her mind. She imagined a fat, furry, fuzzy fox-like animal with red-and-yellow striped hair and big, bulbous, blue eyes. She saw it playfully pouncing among puddles and pools in the street. She decided to call it a skitterpip. The skitterpip continued skipping and skedaddling through the ponds in her head when it was joined by something she decided was called a popalop. It was a long, low, lanky sort of thing, covered in little scales that looked lemony in the rainy limelight, its antics lit by the light of the streetlamps. It jumped and spun and looped around the skitterpip’s feet, splashing this way and that, pushing the skitterpip to splish that way and this, then they both sploshed those ways and there… It was a beautiful dance that seemed like it could go on forever—

And then the short spring shower stopped and so did the skitterpip and the popalop, with one last flip flop and they faded and fluttered and sputtered away. At least until the next rainy day.