THE GNOME PROJECT

Finnegan heard it before he saw it— the low roll of thunder tucked behind the ridge, the sound of the forest drawing a deep breath before the downpour.

He was heading home from the far meadow, a pack full of acorns, bark shavings, and a small figure he’d started shaping from a lump of soft clay he’d found during lunch.
The air had that strange feel to it— bright and light one moment, heavy the next.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the edge of the storm cresting the trees, a wall of gray rumbling toward him like a slow stampede. He grinned. 

“All right then,” he said to no one in particular, “let’s see who’s quicker.”

He started at an easy trot, boots thudding on the soft trail,
ducking branches, skipping roots he knew by heart. The wind caught him first, whistling in the pines as it surrounded him. 

Then came the first few drops—big, cold, deliberate. He pulled his hat down tight, leaned forward a couple more degrees, and pushed faster.

The race was on.

The forest flashed by; his focus narrowed—a blur of green and bark and motion. Raindrops drummed the leaves behind him like applause, and for a while he was winning— the kind of winning that makes your chest ache and your grin widen.

But the storm had longer legs. Halfway down the last hill it caught him clean— a single gust, a white rush of rain that soaked him through in an instant. 

He skidded to a stop, laughing, hands on his knees, breath loud against the roar.

He could have run for cover. Instead, he tipped his face to the sky and let the rain pour down, feeling the forest cool and sigh around him. The little clay figure in his pack would be ruined,
but the moment wasn’t.

“Good race,” he said, nodding at the clouds. And the clouds, already moving east, rumbled something that sounded a lot like laughter.