Storms, are pretty similar to stars, in a way.
Not in their heat, or size, rather, the world needs both sunny days and rainy days, plants and animals, I mean.
With the sun, almost all animals and plants need even a bit of it to live, and the lakes mammals drink from, would never get refilled again if there were no rain, nor could the plants live, with their roots unwatered
Similarly, it's considered a calamity, if there is too much of one, and not enough of the other.
Too much sun, everything dies of the heat, plants dry and earth cracks, as all the moisture escapes.
With the rain, it's the opposite, plants drown, earth sinks and warps, things get far too humid.
And both will kill humans in great amounts.
Another way they are similar, is energy, or rather, their lifespans.
With storms, the more water they have within them, the bigger they get, eventually the water gets heavy enough that it begins to rain, but the more it rains, the greater the amount that falls, the shorter the lifespan of the storm gets.
In turn, the stars in the sky have variable lifespans too, the hotter they are, the bigger they are, more dense they get, the shorter the lifespan they have.
Of course the lifespan of a storm, is maybe anything from a few hours to a few minutes, depending on how much rain falls, and how much water it gets before it begins to rain, but from what I've noticed about the storms that come about where I am, the more rainfall happens, the shorter the storm lasts.
I've seen incredible thunder storms, where the rain fell in sheets, but those ones only lasted for maybe a minute at worst, an hour at best.
And for storms that barely dribble a bit? I've seen one that lasted two days, it was incredible.
I think it's kind of similar with stars, the greatest, brightest and largest star, will only live for a few million years, while the barely noticeable stars of the universe, only technically considered 'stars' might just be the last lights in the universe.
after everything else has gone out with a bang, they'll be there, to watch as the final days of our reality blink for the last time.
And I think that's poetry, that the small and unimpressive, might just last longer than anything that could have gotten told about in a story, or made note of in a research paper.
Of course, there are far more differences then similarities between a storm and a star, one blots the sky, the other paints it, one makes a morning muggy, the other makes that same morning vibrant.
But I do think the fact that the more they give to the world, the smaller their lifespans get, is tragic, and beautiful, and frankly, relatable.
Maybe I'm finding similarity where there is in truth only a projection of my own worries.
Perhaps I could have said that in fewer words, but I'm satisfied.
-transcript found within the dream journal of a long dead author whose ghost revealed themselves to our editor in a dream, and has since request anonymity, said individual went on record to state they were 'mostly out of ideas on this one, guys,'.
the validity of this and several other of their [the editor's] statements remains unclear at this point.
- - - -
"Ok, ok okay. Ok I'm in a dream this is a dream." As she spoke she flailed her arms a bit.
But after a moment, her face shifted from an expecting hope to a slightly nervous understanding.
"Alright that wasn't enough to collapse the dream." Reaching up she scratched her chin in confusion.
Without much to stop her, she began to pace.
"Okay, well the wolf guy kinda collapsed into ash the moment I touched it, now that I think about it, that thing did feel a bit familiar" as she spoke she motioned in front of her as if to straighten out a pile of paper on a table, that of course did not exist.
Then she stopped for a moment, and looked towards the gate that she had disregarded, mind -as usual- going a mile a minute.
With a calculating glean to her eyes, she turned to look at the ground, thereafter her gaze lifted to the very clinic she had just left, more accurately, it's roof.
Outstretching a hand, she wills her mana skin to appear, and with a slight moment, it does.
"Huh, no mana drain, well, this is a dream.—" without even thinking of the oddity, Shepard runs over to the wall, and begins climbing it with claws formed from the mana skin.
'Huh, More stable then in reality, maybe because I expect it to be? The devil likely doesn't have much to go off of for what I can and can't do besides maybe my memories, but wait wouldn't that mean it can read my thoughts?' As soon as Shepard finished the thought, her mana skin began destabilizing.
"Yeah that's just about what I expected." She said with a dead pan face as she slowly fell off the wall.
After landing onto the ground, Shepard sat down and began to think.
'Ok so the devil isn't omniscient, it knows what I do, like the coral peacock captain's Dream magic, except it's founded on what, my imagination instead of the devil's? Hmm, maybe not..'
'Wait shouldn't the-' the rest of Shepard's thought was drowned out by static.
With a focused look, Shepard continued on past the open gate.
As she walked to the right, she past the lanky, gaunt, completely still figures on the street with a smaller amount of visible trepidation than usual.
On the inside, only the occasional word such as 'oh,' or 'I' could be faintly made out behind the still existent static.
The smug grin on her ugly little face as she hobbled forward with her two left feet and screamed like the little girl she is when she saw one of the figures move out of the corner of her eye.
"Some strong wind, for a dream," she said in a blase tone, completely devoid of emotion, like the sociopath she is.
With the spontaneity of a person who 'just sort of fell out of love' with a hobby they barely tried at, she saw a lever, and pulled it, only for it to break into ash, just like that wolfman from before.
"Unfortunate" unlike how Shepard normally acts, she simply moved on, instead of having an overthinking meltdown, when something doesn't go her way.
Instead, she simply began to climb the gothic architecture of the wall, up to the ladder above, this time, using the details as hand holds rather then climbing with her mana skin.
After getting to the latter, she found it solid and began to climb up it at a faster pace.
Making it up to the roof however, did not grant her the vantage she needed to see her surroundings to her satisfaction, she turned her gaze to the spiked, gothic roofing of the clinic she had previously failed to climb.
For a briefest moment, the static lifted, only for Shepard to be thinking 'a little bit of this, a few of those… what about-.' As she thought that, she took her finger, licked it, and raised it to the sky, 'right, no wind in a dream,'
'Hey wait a minute this is-' and then the static was back in place, and suddenly, there was a rush of wind.
There should not have been a rush of wind.
Then, the cheater that she is, Shepard threw a string of her mana, carried by the wind, towards the highest point of the clinic's roof.
And pulled.
Being suddenly rocketed towards the other building, Shepard seemed cool calm and collected, and reached the top without much issue.
All the while, the static drowned out the panic attack that was surely coming from her innermost thoughts.
Looking around, Shepard got a better idea of the surroundings of the floating island she had entered onto.
Most of it was the same as it was last she looked, but in the distance, slowly getting bigger on the horizon, was a ship.
But before she could get a closer look, a human scream mixed with multiple brass horns and the screeching made from a choir of fiddles, filled her ears.
The sound was deafening.
And staggered as she was, she couldn't react in time as a blurr of crimson launched into her from her blind spot.