#rowposts are incoming eventually I promise. I already have some ideas for the other prompts I got. but they need to cook a bit longer

[spellsparkler]

9!

9: Catastrophic weather

The world is breaking apart.

It isn’t, probably; this is probably normal, up here, where the streets don’t need lighting and half the space is just endless emptiness. This is probably normal, the cavern-roof-that-isn’t cracking into pieces, the sounds of it like rock sloughing off into the oil-black ocean, the wet. The smell, too, like nothing they’ve smelled before – green-soft as the grass under their feet, which doesn’t actually look as green as everyone said it would, but then everything’s much darker and shattering-to-pieces-er than anyone said, too – and the cold, and the dark that’s a different sort of dark, and the wet, plastering their hair to their forehead in a sticky-smooth way like they’ve just gone swimming. And there’s more water. And there’s more water. And Yrre stands, fresh out the Underdark, on some sort of slope that they can’t quite make out because it’s not nearly so light as everyone said it would be, what must be grass crinkling under their boots, smelling soft and airy and spring green. And they’re drenched to the skin, which doesn’t bode well for their pack.

And there – again – the world splits open with a vicious light like nothing they’ve seen before. Breath catches, air-bright and still-stiff, in their throat, and then they’re almost knocked down, and the whole world rumbles, and they’re a little bit afraid for their life. When they try to kick-start their breathing again they suck water up their nose and start coughing. Their clothes are dragging. Hair, pearl-grey and shorn short, spatters itself as best it can across their face. Again, they’re sent staggering back a few steps, nearly tripping over their feet in the pockmarked dirt. Their feet are almost dry in their rothé-leather boots.

Yrre is not silly, nor are they a child; they’ve prepared for this, for weeks, months, but it’s all so much – another white-bright crackle, another peal of sound, and every time their breath turns brittle and hollow. Maybe terror, maybe awe, maybe excitement, hot and quick in their veins. They keep gasping, which means they keep sucking in water – and they have prepared, they have, but damn it all, no-one told them it would be so wet.

But they have prepared. When next they’re sent stumbling, they know that it’s wind – a bluster, a gale, rather stronger than they ever imagined it because it always sounded so tame. Air is oft-stagnant, down below; Yrre had imagined a more vigorous version of the drafts that cast themselves coolly across the under-seas, and this is not that. This is a bit like being hit in the face with a hand that’s larger than your entire body. It’s like the air that wraps around the world is vibrant and alive and really, really wants Yrre to sit down. Their waterlogged clothes are flapping with the force of it. They still can’t catch their breath.

And as the water pelts down, they know that it’s rain; distinctly uncomfortable, and very cold, and a common phenomenon, they understand, crucial to the overland earth and kind of frozenly unpleasant. And the rain comes from the sky – which is such a strange word, so sibilant – which can’t be seen right now, in the dark, but which Yrre knows is supposed to be about as blue as blue can get, except sometimes, when it’s orange or purple or black with the white dots of stars. It sounds indecisive. They like it.

And when it all cracks in two, the soft, swollen patterns of the clouds illuminated, the grass of the strange sodden hillside they stand on momentarily lit in cold glow – they know that’s lightning, they’ve seen it before, except no they haven’t, clearly. Every spark-spell they’ve ever seen must have been utter shit because they thought it was striking and interesting and had fascinating potential for use that people didn’t seem to consider but none of it was anything like this, crawling out of a burrow-hole in the sodden earth to find the whole fabled new world crackling to pieces, drenching you in vicious rain, catching glimpses only when the sky splits with clear light. The hair on their neck stands on end. Their heart stumbles in time with the thunder’s rolling. Nothing has ever been like this – the abstract shapes, the frozen cold, the quivering of the wind-blown air like it’s caught up in anticipation. The wind whips hair out or their face. For a moment, Yrre feels swallowed up by the sensation; the world is gilded in frost and silver. They want to peel the dark-hidden sky away and get to the place where the lightning comes from.

It’s called a storm, Yrre remembers. They don’t have them, down below. They whisper the word, quiet on rain-drenched lips, swallowed up by the freezing noise of it all. They think they love it. All their stuff is definitely dripping wet by now.

Lightning cracks again, sharp and fierce and bitter-bright, and Yrre laughs, joyous and breathy. Something sparks in their gut. They know they’ll stay in the storm until it weathers them to ash.