A Rainy Street in Karimatra

Airpaint  ·  Yu  ·  Jun 23, 2026

I put down on paper the street I'd been watching from the cart.

The sky sat low, a gray that couldn't quite decide what color it wanted to be. The cobblestones were soaked through, holding the gaslight and the light from the shopfronts in a slow, unsteady embrace.

People with umbrellas hurried past, shoulders drawn in. Beneath the feet of an automaton carrying a crate, a ripple opened once in a puddle — a small plip — and was broken almost immediately by the rain. The row of lights stretching into the distance said, quietly, that this day was still going on, rain or not.

I didn't draw the cart in the foreground. Didn't draw my own shadow either. Just the wet stones, left alone — the presence of whoever had been sitting here left blank, given over to the rain-lit air.

Even so, every time I look at this scene, I can bring it right back —
standing in front of that wooden house in the harbor town,
breathing, listening to the sound of the rain.