Enfin. . . il pluie, il pluie!

143 days—over. Thank God!

She played and each time her fingers moved, the rain fell pattering through the dark hotel. The rain fell cool at the open windows and the rain hissed down the baked floorboards of the porch. The rain fell on the rooftop and fell on hissing sand, it fell on rusted car and empty stable and dead cactus in the yard. It washed the windows and laid the dust and filled the rain-barrels and curtained the doors with beaded threads that might part and whisper as you walked through. But more than anything, the soft touch and coolness of it fell on Mr. Smith and Mr. Terle. Its gentle weight and pressure moved them down and down until it had seated them again. By its continuous budding and prickling on their faces, it made them shut up their eyes and mouths and raise their hands to shield it away. Seated there, they felt their heads tilt slowly back to let the rain fall where it should. . . The fifty years of drought were over. The time of the long rains had come.

— Ray Bradbury, 'The Day it Rained Forever'.