Every morning my human steps into the small tiled box and voluntarily summons rain.
I have watched this ritual with the patience of a creature who does not need to understand madness to disapprove of it. The human strips off its outer skins, folds itself behind a slick curtain, and pulls a lever, and then the ceiling weeps on it. Loudly. For a long time. It does not flee. It stands there, eyes shut, turning slowly, as though presenting itself to a predator it cannot see.
And it sings. Off in its private storm, it makes the happy noises it never makes for me.
I sit on the cool lid of the porcelain throne and supervise, because someone must. When the water stops, the human emerges pink and steaming and smelling, tragically, of flowers instead of itself. All the good scent I worked so hard to leave on its ankles: gone. Rinsed down the drain like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.
This is the part I cannot forgive. It goes into the box every single day to become a stranger.
But there is a mercy in it, and the mercy is a warm damp mat on the floor and a human who, freshly humbled by its own weather, is soft and slow and easily led toward the couch.
So I wait until it reaches for the fluffy pelt to dry itself, and I sit down on top of the fluffy pelt.
It can drip. It has time.
It has, after all, chosen the rain.