Raindrops mercilessly pounded on the roofs and sidewalks of Yearsville, West Virginia. The weather was always predictably miserable this time every year, but rain had been pouring ceaselessly for five days now, enough to qualify it as a major rain storm.

Leaning fearlessly out her second story window, September Livingstone cupped her hands, happily collecting little puddles of icy rain droplets in them.

"Fresh air," she whispered to herself as she cheerfully inhaled a lungful of humid, outside oxygen. Replacing the stale air in her room with this energized her and restored her normal level of happiness.

Technically, because she was grounded, September really had no right or reason for feeling happy at all, but that was just the kind of person she was. Though shy as can be and having seen so many tragedies in her young life, September remained the bright and light hearted girl she'd always been.

September's grounding sentence had resulted from a fight with her older sister June. She really couldn't remember what the argument was about anymore, but June had definitely started it.

June was a pretty, but also petty sixteen year old who was easily bored with whatever excitement her own life presented, so, she went looking for trouble often, usually by picking on her younger siblings and September was her favorite target because, recently, she had began fighting back.

During the fight, June had called her a name and September angrily tried to think of a satisfying retort for it. The kitchen sink had chosen that moment to explode, which wasn't really unusual, it had happened three times before now. Randomly, the faucet would simply snap off on its own and water would shoot out at random angles.

Hearing the racket this caused, the girls' mother, Perennial Livingstone had stormed into the room. Finding June soaking wet and sobbing, the fake crocodile tears that September had learned to recognize but Perennial believed to be sincere, and September scowling but still dry, she hadn't investigated any farther, simply blamed the entire ordeal on her youngest daughter.

September was grounded for one week and she obediently hadn't left her room for five days now. The rain had started falling on the first day and wasn't expected to clear up for two more.

The fact that the rain was accompanying September through her grounding term was, of course, a coincidence, but a consolation none the less.

A second later, a brilliant flash lit up the whole sky. She jumped in surprise and quickly withdrew her arms back inside. The lightning was followed moments later by a booming clap of thunder, which brought her attention back to the sky.

There, she spotted something where the first lightning bolt had been, it could be another lightning flash, but it wasn't the normal yellowish silver color of lightning, it was a very clear scarlet streak across the sky. That image lasted only a couple of seconds, fading away just as the thunder did, but it had remained long enough for September to realize that she hadn't imagined it.