A Storm

The rain oozes to the ground in cloudforms. Pearls of water run down glass windows in lazy patterns. The sky churns; low to the ground and quick-moving, white tufts silhouetted against dark slate masses.

Tall grass and gnarled trees, their leaves bunched together tightly, sway back and forth in the breeze. A silent glow of lighting behind the clouds in the distance flares a dull yellow for only a moment before it is extinguished.

The heavens rumble an unearthly, stirring roar. The maw of the sky opens itself fully and gives birth to the storm.

The water comes to the ground in great waves, countless drops falling in every direction at once, their movements punctuated by thunderclap.

A few shriveled sparrows cluster underneath the eaves of an old adobe building, its walls slippery and rough. They flutter their matted feathers dry, but the water has stained their hollow bones with a deep coldness they cannot shake.

The wind whips and turns, the water unanimously giving in to its goading. It pools in large muddy craters in the ground, dead plants laying crushed and flat inside them. A few strands of a flower petal float across their surfaces for a moment but are then thrust underneath the muddy water by the ferocity of the rain.

In the mountains the caverns are lit by the dark blue light of the sun filtered through the clouds. The tired creatures in them move about their homes slowly, watching the rain drip down from the upper edges of their stone windows. Deeper into the caves, there is only darkness, but the sound of the storm echoes and bounces throughout them endlessly, probing and feeling far down into the center of the earth, where the blind live, and the blind smile as the memories of the great storm come flooding back into their solitary minds as the faint smell of wet misty air enters their nostrils.

One of the men crawl outside of the cave experimentally. He draws back in surprise as his head is blasted with water. He shudders and slips back into the darkness. It is time to stay inside.

In the sky above the fat white layers of cloud a lone bird of prey circles. The sun is dipping below its sight. It will soon be dark, and once the rain has stopped, the insects will scuttle from their underground homes, from under fallen leaves and branches, and he will eat.

A brief stunning bloom of electricity crackles and splinters across the trunk of a tree, leaving long jagged black scars across its skin. It smolders dangerously.

Again the lighting comes, spreading across a field of cracked and old dead grass. A tiny flame erupts underneath the brush, and begins to spread. Choking black spins off into the air, quickly buffeted away by the wind.

The rain is so thick the tops of the trees are dimmed and fading away. Into the distance, all is fog and mist, deep blues and purples mating into a solid gray that stretches into eternity.

The fire is now towering. It rises into the sky, a pillar of searing crimson light. The clouds around it glow intensely. The earth begins to bleed smoke from its earthen pores, but the rain becomes even stronger, and the fire slowly dies, a few last licks of flame spitting into the air before finally succumbing to the moisture. The field it had burned lies blackened and ruined, just touching the edge of the forest.

The lake has flooded, its body drooling over old embankments and mossy rock. A single motionless body lies in it, old, gray, and rotted, having finally been churned up from the twisted roots at the bottom by the intensity of the rain.

A single traveler makes his way along the path nearby, pushing overgrown tree branches and carefully stepping over the tiny snakes in his way. They slink and squiggle away hurriedly, looking at him after he passes with their tiny black eyes, their tongues tasting his scent in the air.

The man finds a large tree and sits underneath it, watching the rain curtain around him in long streams. He fumbles a match from a pocket in his heavy jacket and lights it, his hands shaking as he cups it within his hands. He brings his face closer to its warmth and watches everything rage about him.

After awhile, he falls asleep, his eyelids dewy and pale.

When he wakes it is morning. The rain still falls, but in thin little gasps. The sky has almost broken, and although the cerulean sky is shy to reveal itself just yet, one knows it is merely biding its time, waiting to spill its light upon the darkened world.

Flowers twist and flinch, hesitant to open, but stirring in their need for the freshness of the sun.