Lightning flashes. For a moment, the world is black and white. Simple. Stark. Char knows it’s a false positive. Negative. It’s not that easy.

Flash. Again. There’s a scent of ozone in the air, and a rumble of sound that Char feels in the ground below her. The rain hasn’t come yet, though clouds roll in from the West. Rain would be a release, and right now, the storm still builds.

The light pretends. It brings day to night. Vision to the darkness. Clarity to the confused. But clarity, like the lightning, is fleeting. Knowledge in an instant, gone again just as quickly.

It doesn’t answer her question. Doesn’t pretend to provide consolation or forgiveness. Lightning just brings heat and energy. Sizzle. Shock. And a world darker than it was before the lightning struck.

Behind Char, a house burns. One spark, one flame, one bolt. Is it better, now? Or before? It doesn’t matter. Can’t matter, now.

The lightning illuminates the flames, the golden glow of fire and warmth reduced in an instant to white heat. Destruction.

Another flash echoes off the reflection of something’s eyes, just on the edge of the circle of warmth. Wolves gathering, predators waiting. Can they smell what burns? In her hands, Char plays with the feathers hanging from a dreamcatcher that never caught a single happy fantasy. Still, it survived. The detritus of a childhood beside her – a mask, a bicentennial quarter, a broken compass, a game piece, a candle in the shape of a teddy bear holding a heart, warm and almost pliable this near to the flames.

The lightning flashes and the thunder screams, one on top of the other. The storm is almost upon her, though the tumult is done.

Another flash, and with the echo of the rumble still pounding in her ears, the rain comes.

It will not put out the fire immediately. There’s room in her life for the eventuallys now. The sooner-or-laters and the most-likelys. The stark black and white of decisions made, of pictures posted on a mental bulletin board, illuminating the past – that is done.

In the storm, Char stands, and pulls a key on a ribbon out from under her now-wet shirt, the metal still warm from her skin. Walking away, she throws the key behind her. Let someone else deal with locks and doors.

She follows the lightning.

By ktbuffy

Wordcount: