dripping

"Mind if I sit a while with you, Uncle?"

The old man squinted up at me from his seat against the cliff face, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the glaring sun. "Water?"

I dropped my dust-caked canteen into his lap, easing myself down next to him as he pulled off the cap and guzzled greedily. Water trickled out the corner of his mouth, coursing down his chin to splash on the scorched rock at our feet. I settled back against the cliff, letting the heat from the rock diffuse the knots in my shoulders. A gust of wind whistled down the dark, narrow crack in the cliff face next to us and chilled me to the bone in spite of the desert heat pressing upon me from all sides.

He stopped for air, and I could hear his shallow panting. "What are you doing out here, Uncle? This is no place for an old man."

"I am waiting. For her." He pointed out across the sand, and I turned, peering into the distance. A roiling grey-green cloud sat just above the heat haze along the horizon. "She is a thing of beauty, is she not? I am going to race her, one last time." He gestured toward the crack in the cliff.

I watched, aghast, as the leviathan raced toward us across the hot desert. I turned to look up the long, narrow chimney. "It's too late, old man. You'll never make it!" I yelled over the roar of the oncoming storm.

He cackled. "No! It is too soon! We wait! We wait until it starts dripping. Until the very edge of her is overhead." Fat droplets of water started to splat down about us as he spoke. "Here she comes! Climb for your life, boy!" Swinging into the crack, he braced himself against the smooth walls and started to scuttle up, faster than I could have imagined he would be.

I scrambled after him. "Wait! Uncle! Have you ever won before?"

A gleeful chortle ricocheted down the chute. "Never! Down she comes and washes me out, time after time. But not today! Today I will win her at last!"