dark clouds

The summer before the war was endlessly hot, and endlessly full of arguing. Arguments in the Council about how to rule, arguments in the inner circle about how to navigate the city's politics, or occasionally just about how irritating we found each other. I took to staring out the window at the sky, for all the good that did me. There was never a cloud in sight.

It was one of the latter arguments that first marked a change. Nevena was yelling at Drysi about something, which was only surprising because she usually waited to do her yelling until they were alone (but everyone could tell she wanted to anyway), and no, I couldn't be bothered to pay attention. It was unbearably hot--almost unimaginably hot, so hot even the Princess had abandoned proper court dress in favor of something light and loose-fitting. (I imagine the heat is why she also was irritable enough to yell instead of merely suggest that she felt yelling was desirable.) But there were clouds in the sky--small, fluffy ones at first, but moving and growing and darkening as I watched--and suddenly all the oppressive heat and humidity suddenly felt like it might be building to something.

"What are you smiling at?" This was directed at me--Drysi, who seldom rose to the Princess's bait but wasn't above ignoring her if she thought it would be funny, interrupted her serene highness in mid-sentence.

Was I smiling? I hadn't realized. I gestured at the window. "Dark clouds gathering, look. There's going to be a storm."

Everyone stopped to look at the clouds, and a strange silence settled over us as we watched them grow. The promise of the gathering clouds had, for a moment at least, stolen the heat from the argument, provided a moment of relief from the endless tyranny of summer.