My people live in the eye of a massive storm. A magical structure, filled with chaos. Flashes of lightning, winds, hail… sometimes it rains flame or acid, sometimes even worse or stranger things. I still remember a rain of milk from my childhood, and there’s a bolt of lightning outside my house the turned into glass upon striking the ground, simply embedding itself there. Occasionally, one of us braves the winds, goes into the even worse portions of the storm to bring back outside food or artifacts.
It’s hard enough even to live in the eye, where the weather is quietest. But out there in the winds, we lose one person in three. Struck down by unexpected phenomena. The lighting in those stormy lands has a taste for blood, or at least many think so, and it’s one of the least dangers. My own father was taken by the winds, never to return. Torn away well before I could truly understand what it meant. A gust of wind sharpened itself into blades, and invisibly cut him to ribbons. Not a clean way to go, leaving not even enough for a proper burial.
The storm’s rage only seems to grow as time goes on, as well. Wild gusts rattling our windows, fields torn up by wind or shattered by tremors. Our augers try to predict the capricious twists of the sky above us, but they fail to do so more often than not. The storm stifles us as well; the majority of conversation is about the storm itself. Wondering who lightning will steal away next. Talking about how to shield ourselves from the wind. Wondering if our fields will survive if a sudden frost or heat overtakes us…
I’ve learned to speak in a… different manner. Not with the people around me, but with the storm itself. I’m no auger, to try and predict the winds days in advance, but I can hear them begin to howl behind me. Can understand their ebb and flow, and wind my way around and past them. I’ve been out into the storm proper several times, relying on my instincts and the voice of the wind to guide me, and returned unscathed each time, often with a small object of magic or two for my own collection.
To brave the storm untrained, without a team, is forbidden among my people… but while their training might keep them alive, they have also grown complacent. Their methods, to only progress so far, to only chase certain objectives… they are not nearly ambitious enough for me.
No, my ambition is to tame the storm itself. To bind its power to my own bidding, and turn it into a true boon for the village, rather than the obstacle it currently stands as.
It won’t be an easy journey, to find the source of the storm; it certainly does not lay anywhere within the eye itself. But it’s worthwhile, I think. To prevent any more deaths, and to bring about a true age of plenty to my people. No more will I sit idly by, holding myself back, sitting around a fireplace in a tavern, planning with the other villagers how to shield against floods, droughts, heatwaves, lightning, and all manner of other disasters. No more!
I am done talking about the weather. It is well past time someone does something about it.
Commentary: Another joke-y one, although this one I could see turning into a full story. I actually came up with the punchline first by adapting an old, corny joke, and decided to see how ‘serious’ I could make a story seem while still having that as the final line. It was mostly a writing exercise initially, but I like how it turned out.