Rosie heard the storm before she saw it, in the vibrations it made in the earth. She rushed along her path, hoping to get to safety before it arrived. The smell of death preceded it, many of her kind that had been unfeelingly destroyed in its path.
She reached a small crevice and ducked in, turned, looked up. The curiosity would one day be the end of her, she knew, but they were all so different, these storms. She just had to know what this one looked like.
It was approaching with great speed, miles at a time. It towered to the sky, infinitely tall; she could not even see the end of it. They were all like this, gods on earth, arbiters of life and death. At their hands she could experience a windfall of her life, or instant death.
This one suddenly stopped short. Rosie felt a frisson of fear and excitement. They did not usually stop unless it was going to be something good. The wind moved past her as it shrunk into itself, folding down from the sky. She stayed still, but knew that some of her industrious companions had not done the same and no doubt drew its attention. She wished them well, hoped they would survive. Hoped that it was the good kind of surprise this time.
Its breath was like a windstorm as it sank ever lower, seeming to halve in size, then thirds. Some of its colors were like the forests next to her path, the colors of earth and root. But there were some that definitely were not found in her home haunts, that more matched the colors of the strange houses she found lying in the forests sometimes, shiny and reflective and occasionally with food still inside. In this case, a shell, with a creature inside.
Rosie tasted the air. The storm – now more resembling a mountain – smelled of food, but Rosie had been around long enough to know that was a lie, there would be only death there.
Unless….
She waited. There was a pause in the air, a waiting. She sensed some of her companions pausing as well, noticing finally that something had changed.
Finally, it happened. She could smell it. A huge branch came from the mountain, stopped by the side of the forest. Small white boulders were dropped into a pile next to the forest’s edge. She hesitated, knowing it could be a trap. But after some of her companions noticed and started making their way there, and nothing bad happened to them, she cautiously left her hiding place.
The flavor was exquisite. She allowed herself a small taste of the delicious sweetness and then started gathering some up to take back home.
As suddenly as it had arrived, the mountain turned back into a storm and disappeared into the horizon.
You never knew, with storms.
