Anya says, “I am an undergraduate student at Georgetown University interested in creative writing and storytelling.”
What We Asked For
by Anya Lotun
The rain pattered on the stained glass windows. Father Andrew, rising from his last confession, strode briskly to the church doors, mistaking the noise from the gentle rain as a commotion outside. With his weathered hand, he grasped the iron handle of the door, and before pulling it open, smelled the scent of petrichor. It made him pause for a second, his heart starting to rise hopefully, then squashed by the cynicism gathered over the years. But the door was already a little open and Father Andrew had little time to contemplate any emotion before he felt the first drop of water on his eyelid, and then the next on his cheek, and finally as he stepped out into the open, his vermilion robes felt the rain pouring from what his faith proclaimed the heavens above.
Already around him, mothers and their children were looking up to the sky in wonder. The mothers with remembrance of the weather that had not come since well before they were their children’s age. The children with confusion first and then realization that they were experiencing the times they had only heard adults chatter about amidst grown-up conversations.
The happiness only stayed for a bit. The brief space of pure emotions that had existed across the town had already begun to be invaded by the constraints of man. The houses had all been changed to ignore nature. Gutters had long ago been replaced with solar collection strips, and the downspouts on the houses had been replaced with ventilation shafts pumping filtered air from underground. As the rain continued to pour, gathering intensity with each second, the streets flooded. Adults looked down at their designer shoes in horror and children who dropped their screens into water were none the happier.
Father Andrew watched the scene progress. Nature, or God as he believed, had brought back the rain that was revered for fifty years since it had last been seen. Yet as soon as it was gifted, discontent for this cherished thing had already settled in.
He remembered a time when people would come in droves to church and pray for rain to return. Mrs. Patterson, who owned the new shopping complex on Fifth Street, had wept at the altar just three months ago, begging for “the mercy of water.” Now Father Andrew watched her standing under the church awning, shouting into her phone about flood damage to her basement storage units, her voice sharp with blame.
The mayor had given a speech last spring—Father Andrew had been there and had blessed the opening ceremony—about preserving “rain culture” and remembering “what we lost.” The new civic center they’d built that day had a roof designed to collect sunlight, walls that purified dry air, and a foundation that assumed the ground would stay parched forever.
By evening, the rain hadn’t stopped. Father Andrew stood in his small office adjacent to the sanctuary, looking out at the parking lot where water pooled around expensive cars. His phone buzzed with messages from parishioners. He scrolled through them slowly.
Father, is this a punishment?
We need to pray for this to stop.
Why would God do this to us now?
That last one made him set the phone down. His hand trembled. For fifty years they had asked why God had taken the rain away. Now they asked why He had brought it back.
There was a knock at his door. Thomas Brennan stepped in, shaking water from his jacket. Thomas had been coming to church for thirty years, had lit candles every Sunday for the rain’s return, had told his children and grandchildren stories about puddles and umbrellas like they were fairy tales.
“Father,” Thomas said, “the basement is flooding. The sump pump wasn’t built for this. We’re going to have water damage.”
“I see,” Father Andrew said quietly.
“Can we…” Thomas hesitated. “Can we hold a prayer service? Ask for… for moderation?”
Father Andrew looked at him. Really looked at him. Thomas was sixty-three years old. He remembered rain. He had prayed for it, and mourned its absence with genuine tears. But his house, Father Andrew knew, had been renovated five years ago with no consideration for drainage. His yard was xeriscaped with expensive drought-resistant plants. His gutters had been removed to make room for a smart home weather prediction system that was now uselessly reporting: precipitation detected.
“What exactly,” Father Andrew asked, his voice careful, “would we pray for?”
Thomas blinked. “For… for relief. For balance.”
“We prayed for rain for fifty years, Thomas.”
“Yes, but not like this. Not all at once. Not when everything’s changed.”
Father Andrew nodded slowly. Everything had changed. That was the truth of it. They had built a world that assumed the drought would last forever, even while they prayed weekly for it to end. They had wanted rain the way people wanted a miracle—something distant and abstract that wouldn’t require them to actually adapt their lives.
“I’ll prepare something,” Father Andrew said.
After Thomas left, Father Andrew sat in the silence of his office, listening to the rain drum against the window. It was a sound he hadn’t heard since he was a young priest, newly ordained, full of certainty about divine plans and human nature.
He had spent fifty years watching people pray for something they had no intention of preparing for. They had wanted the comfort of longing, the righteousness of loss, the easy virtue of hoping for better days. But when those better days arrived, arriving exactly as requested, exactly as mourned for, they were an inconvenience.
Father Andrew thought about the sermons he had given, the prayers he had led, the assurances he had offered that God listened, that faith mattered, that their voices reached heaven. He had believed it all. Had staked his entire life on the premise that what people said they wanted, they actually wanted.
The rain continued into the night. By morning, the news was reporting unprecedented flooding. The city council called an emergency meeting. Engineers were already drawing up plans for rapid drainage systems. Someone started a petition to investigate “weather modification technology gone wrong.”
Father Andrew didn’t prepare a prayer service. Instead, he walked through the flooded streets in his old boots, the same ones he’d worn fifty-three years ago when rain was ordinary. He watched people bail water from their homes, watched them curse the sky, watched them make phone calls to insurance companies and contractors.
And he understood, finally, that the rain had taught him something about faith he had never wanted to learn: that words and wants are not the same thing. That humans are creatures of profound contradiction, capable of praying for something with all their hearts while building entire lives against its return.
The rain didn’t care. It fell as it always had, indifferent to human preparation or human prayer, answering nothing, judging nothing, simply being what it was.
Father Andrew stood in it until he was soaked through, and felt, for the first time in decades, like he understood something true.
Copyright 2026 by Anya Lotun