On Storms

The winds that precede the arrival of storms detach leaves from trees, decorate their descent to the earth with flourishes and dives, then collect them against hollows and crevices where they are spun through a loom made entirely of air, which works them into a fabric linking the calm that comes before and the tempest to follow. There are storms on Earth as well, storms that inspire terror with the destructive power of wind, rain and tides. The storms in Faerie resemble less those of Earth than they do the internal storms of individuals. The squalls that rage within us are no less fierce or capable of inspiring fear than those of Earth's climate, but they are less predictable. There are no satellites capable of peering into the human soul and transmitting their information into the waiting headsets of anthropological meteorologists. There are no heavenly maps depicting the slow crawl of massive white spirals toward the coastline. No, the onset of an internal storm is more difficult to perceive, because individuals are more likely to store up energy beyond sustainable limits and their infrastructure is less reliable in the threat of catastrophic failure. Similarly, in Faerie, storms arise seemingly without pretext. "Why did the thunder rumble at me today?" Be certain that it was not to alleviate a pressure differential in the atmosphere. "Why did the floods threaten to wash my home away?" It had no origin in the cyclical patterns of jet streams over the ocean. "Why did a bolt of lightning split my favorite oak down the middle, leaving a blackened scar from which the bark has been violently ejected?" It is not due to separation of electrical charges within the clouds above. No indeed, the storms of Faerie come without reason or warning. Unlike the storms within people, after the gale settles and the survivors in Faerie gather, not a one of them is heard to mutter, "Well, I never saw that coming," because, of course, in Faerie, storms are a metaphor for the intrinsically inimical relationship between the universe and man, and thus are wholly natural phenomena.