Narrative: "The Day After The Great Rain..."

 The Day After the Great Rain

The storm has passed, leaving the air heavy with damp earth and the salt of the sea. Port Dominion stirs again, not with the idle murmur of a market day, but with the weary determination of a town intent on mending itself.

Merchants are dragging sodden canvas from their shuttered stalls in Dominion Square, shaking out rain-soaked goods and laying bolts of cloth across railings and barrels to dry in the mottled sun. The fountain in the square gurgles once more, its waters muddied from the storm, while women stoop with buckets, scooping clean water from the upper basin to scrub their stoops and wash away the mire.

Children, shoeless, splash noisily in the puddles that run along the cobbled streets, only to be driven back indoors by sharp-tongued mothers. Apprentices sweep standing water down the gutters with brooms, the sound of bristles mixing with the slap of boots in the muck.
Along the edges of the town, field hands slog into half-drowned rows of crops, their boots sinking deep in the clay. They bend and straighten with weary rhythm, testing which plants might be salvaged, which are already lost to the storm. The sweet stink of rotting leaves clings to the air, mingling with the scent of wet hay.

Down by the docks, sailors labor aboard creaking ships, their voices raised in terse calls as they check hulls, patch rigging, and pump out bilges swollen with rainwater. The tide leaves dark stains along the planks, and gulls wheel overhead, shrieking as if mocking the struggle below.

Everywhere there is a sense of purpose — not celebration, but grim necessity. Housewives scrub floors. Tavernkeepers set their benches in the sun to dry. Servants beat damp rugs in the courtyards of their masters. Even the more idle gentry peer from their balconies with narrowed eyes, as though measuring what damage has been done to their holdings.

Yet despite the mud, despite the ruined goods and spoiled grain, there is also resilience. 

Voices ring out, hammers strike, and the town begins to take its shape again. Port Dominion knows storms as well as it knows schemes — both can sweep through and wreak havoc, but both, in time, pass.