It’s cold. The kind of winter where the snow is thick enough to flood your shoes, swallowing every step with a soft crunch. The air bites at your lungs when you breathe in, sharp and clean. You sit on a worn park bench under a flickering lamppost, its light buzzing as snow drifts through it, dusting your shoulders and collecting in areas of your coat.

Your hands are tucked deep in your pockets. The park is quiet.. just the wind blowing through bare branches and the distant traffic you can barely hear.

“Wh—HEY!”

You barely look up before a blur of feathers, boots, and unfiltered momentum slams into you with a half-laugh, half-squeal. The bench jolts beneath the sudden weight.

“No freakin’ way! It’s you!! You!!”

Arms wrap around you before your brain can catch up with whatever the hell is happening, warm and clumsy and way too tight. Snow scatters everywhere. Feathers brush your cheek. Someone is laughing right into your ear.

Rain pulls back just far enough to stare at you like she’s afraid you might vanish if she blinks. Her grin is enormous, stretching her flushed cheeks, breath puffing out in white clouds. Snow is caught in the edges of her feathers and clinging to her hair like she ran through a blizzard.

“I knew it! I knew it was you!” she blurts, words tumbling over each other. “I was like, ‘no way, no way, that can’t be them,’ but then you did that thing where you sit all hunched like you’re in a novel or something and I was like.. yep. That’s them.”

She laughs again, loud and bright, the kind that cuts clean through the cold.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been looking for you!” Rain throws her arms wide like she’s presenting the entire snow-covered park. “Do you know how big this city is? After you moved away, I checked like three cafés, two transit stops, and one alley I probably shouldn’t have gone down, but it felt right at the time.”

She finally pauses, hands planted on her knees, leaning in to study your face with exaggerated seriousness.