Lina was twelve now, old enough to notice that the rain didn’t just bring water. It brought noise —not thunder, but something smaller. A pattering that wasn’t rain. A wet, shuffling sound in the crawlspace under the house.
“You’ll see them soon,” her grandmother said one evening, as the first gray clouds stacked themselves against the hills. “Not with your eyes, maybe. But you’ll know.” rainy season creatures
Every year, just before the first big storm broke the summer’s back, Lina’s grandmother would pull the heavy clay pots inside and hang bundles of dried lemon leaves over every door. “They don’t like the bitter smoke,” she’d say. She never said who they were. Lina was twelve now, old enough to notice