Dot was a small yellow duckling with one brown spot on her head.
She lived by a pond with her mama and her brothers and her sisters. She liked mud. She liked bugs. She liked sitting on the warm rock by the water and falling asleep in the sun.
Dot had never seen rain.
Not once. Not ever.
One morning, the sky turned grey. The air got heavy. The warm rock didn't feel warm anymore.
Dot looked up.
Something hit her on the beak.
Plip.
"HEY," said Dot.
She looked around. Nobody was there.
Then it happened again.
Plip.
Right on top of her head. Right on her brown spot.
"WHO IS DOING THAT?" said Dot.
She puffed up her feathers. She tried to look big and brave. She was not very big. She was a little bit brave.
Then the sky opened up.
Plip plip plip plip plip plip plip.
Water was falling. Out of the air. From ABOVE. Just falling, everywhere, all at once, like the sky had tipped over like a bowl.
"THE SKY IS BROKEN!" Dot yelled.
She ran under a big green leaf by the edge of the pond. She tucked herself in tight. The leaf made a little roof, and the rain went plip plip plip on top of it, and Dot's heart went boom boom boom under her feathers.
She watched the rain hit the pond. Every drop made a tiny circle. Then another circle. Then a hundred circles, all spreading out, bumping into each other, like the water was dancing.
Dot had never seen the pond do that before.
"Mama?" she called.
But Mama was out in the middle of the pond. Just sitting there. In the rain. In ALL that rain.
"MAMA! THE SKY IS BROKEN! COME UNDER THE LEAF!"
Mama turned and looked at Dot. Mama's eyes were soft and calm.
"The sky isn't broken, Dot," Mama said. "This is rain. It comes and it goes. Come see."
"No thank you," said Dot. "I am dry under here and I would like to stay dry under here forever."
But then Dot noticed something.
The rain was making the mud near her feet get squishy. Really squishy. Really, REALLY squishy. And squishy mud was Dot's favorite thing in the whole world.
She looked at the mud.
She looked at the rain.
She looked at the mud again.
She stuck one foot out from under the leaf.
Plip plip plip on her toes.
It was cold. It was wet. It was very, very strange.
She stuck her other foot out.
Then her belly. Then her wings.
The rain came down on every single feather. It ran off her back in tiny rivers. It tickled.
"Oh," said Dot. "OH."
She took one step into the squishy mud and her foot sank right down — SCHLOOP — and she tipped forward and did a somersault and landed on her back with her feet in the air and mud ALL over her brown spot and rain falling right into her open beak.
"BLGHH," said Dot.
Then she laughed so hard she kicked her feet.
She rolled over. She stomped in the mud. She splashed through a puddle that had not been there before. Every time her feet hit the ground — SCHLOOP SCHLOOP SCHLOOP — and she didn't even try to stay standing, because falling down was funnier.
Mama paddled over to the edge of the pond and watched.
The rain kept coming down. The circles kept dancing on the water. The big green leaf filled up like a tiny bowl and then — SPLOOSH — tipped over and dumped all its water right on Dot's head.
Dot stood there, dripping, muddy, one eye open, one eye shut.
She grinned.
"I love broken sky," she said.
And she jumped in the deepest puddle she could find.
