Morning all. We have had power outages as well as internet outages off and on since yesterday afternoon so I am going to be quick about posting. So timers set and off we go.
Woot, got the fifteen minutes down. Now all I have to do is the 15 for the Fifteen Minute Novel before the internet flickers again. Wish me luck. And if not it will be up later.
Tuesday, July 30th: Puffy clouds floated across the sky.
Puffy clouds floated across the sky. Lying on my back in the grass, the sky looked almost unnatural, more like a thing made from paint and meant for a child’s idealized picture book. The clouds were white and puffy and the sky behind them was the picture perfect deep blue that everyone thinks of but rarely sees.
Or at least it had been a rare thing for me to see. Raised far north of here clouds always seemed to be long stretched out things like shredded will and varied in color from an off white that reminded me of a dirty sock to storm filled black. There were shades of graw in between but I could count on one hand the number of white clouds I saw before moving here and still have fingers left over.
The sky behind them was never blue. The best I could remember was a sunny day when no rain was forecast and the sky looked like a clean white sheet of paper. Blue was not something I had experience with in the real world, at least in terms of the sky.
Here the skies were blue more often than not and the clouds more decorative puffs than storm laden portents of doom. The wind here seemed friendlier as well and I found the ends of my hair dancing in the breeze instead of being whipped into a frenzy. In fact everything here seemed gentler, calmer.
It was pleasant, but strange. I didn’t miss the harshness of home precisely, but the placidness here was strangely jarring. I was told I time I would grow accustomed to it. I supposed that was true, after all, what choice did I have. It wasn’t like I could go home again.
The thought led me towards internal darkness and I shifted my thoughts aside. Earlier Camin suggested that I look at the clouds and try to see shapes in them. He said it was a great thing to do on a lazy sunny day when no work called. He also thought I would stop looking at the sky so suspiciously if I spent time imagining shapes in the clouds. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was not looking at the sky suspiciously, exactly.
In my home storms could appear with frightening speed. The sky could go from darkly forbidding to treacherous in a moment and only by paying attention could one hope to avoid calamity. Everyone watched the sky.
Here weather could be seen approaching as it always blew in from the west. Storms, when they arrived, were anticipated. Preparation was made before they arrived. There was no need to stand in eternal readiness.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I was trying to adapt. it was proving harder than I thought to shake some of the ingrained habits. I wondered how long it would be before I stopped looking for storms.
‘Enough,’ I told myself. I looked at the puffy white cloud. ‘Shapes.’ The cloud above me looked like a puffy mass of bleached wool. Somehow, I didn’t think that is what Camin had in mind. I tried again, focusing on a different cloud.
Ten til Midnight 