The Geisha

Ballad of the Lantern and Flame

In secret grove where shadows creep,

Where winds forget and lanterns swing,

A teahouse rotted slow in sleep,

And whispered tales of everything.

She danced within its crumbling walls,

A geisha born of grace and fire.

She turned from vows and duty’s calls,

And danced to burn the old desire.

Her sleeves like smoke, her eyes unshod,

She twirled beneath the paper beams.

No gods to watch, no priest, no god

Just falling dust and orphaned dreams.

But sparks will chase what does not flee,

And fire climbed fast through ancient wood.

Still she danced, rebelliously,

Unbending, wild, misunderstood.

A samurai with quiet tread

Had followed through the forest bare.

Not to return her, but instead

To find her safe, if she’d still care.

He found her as the lanterns broke,

Her form aglow, her breath grown thin.

The teahouse writhed in fire and smoke

And still, she would not let him in.

But he stepped through the falling flame,

No scorn or pride within his eye.

He called her not by duty’s name,

But simply said, “We cannot die.”

He bore her through the burning ash,

Beyond the reach of ruin’s breath.

She fought him once, but not the flash

Of knowing he had spared her death.

They wandered where the prayer flags moaned,

The wind shrine torn by time and gust.

He spoke no vow, she cast no stone

But something in her learned to trust.

In silence by a blossom tree,

They lit a lantern, watched it rise.

It floated slow and breathlessly

Into the soft and wounded skies.

They crossed a bridge of ghost and song,

Where koi beneath them glimmered pale.

The temple welcomed all who’d wronged

But only those who’d learned to fail.

And when at last the mists withdrew,

The village waited, old and kind.

The roofs were bowed, the gates askew

But home is not what’s left behind.

He turned to leave, his duty done,

The sword now quiet at his side.

But she stepped forward with no run

No shout, no tear, no need to hide.

“I thought I fled to find my way,”

She whispered low, her fingers bare.

“But love,” she said, “does not obey

It waits to find who’ll truly care.”

They climbed the hill above the land,

A final lantern in their hold.

No vow was sworn, no ring, no band

Just silent hands, and sky, and gold.

It rose into the night like breath,

Released with calm and tender grace.

No need to race, no fear of death

Just light, and time, and love’s true face.

The Vetting

The Vetting

by Peggy Rockey

The artificial sun never set in Dome 14.

It hovered in a perpetual mid-afternoon glow over manicured sand, wave-generating turbines, and a carefully diverse crowd of families who had all passed their annual scans.

Derik Chase sat stiffly on a synthetic driftwood bench, back rigid, eyes constantly shifting. His hands, clenched in his lap, left sweat-marks on his khakis.

A sharp pop of a drink can opening behind him made him flinch hard enough to draw a few stares. Derik nearly jumped out of his skin.

“It’s just me,” Lina said gently, returning with two chilled bottles of lemonwater.

 “You okay?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah. Sorry. I thought…” He trailed off, scanning the path behind her, the crowd, the dome’s edge. “Where’s Mae?”

Lina sat beside him, setting the drinks down with a clink. “By the shoreline sim, with that tall boy and the girl with the purple streaks. They’re laughing.”

He didn't respond. His gaze drifted to the security towers nestled into the faux cliffs, their matte-black panels bristling with hidden optics. Above them, a glint in the air caught his eye, one of the surveillance drones, floating too low, scanning too long.

Lina followed his gaze.

“You’re spiraling,” she murmured.

He took a sip. “Mae flagged on her scan last week. Category C deviation. Patterns tied to dissonant phrases: freedom, grief, watching, illusion.”

Lina blinked. “You didn’t report it?”

“I deleted the scan. Masked the log under a diagnostics error. Scrubbed the backup.”

She stared at him, horror blooming in her expression. “Derik…”

“She was confused. That’s all. A thought spiral, not rebellion. She doesn’t even realize she’s thinking it.”

Lina dropped her voice. “And if Central finds the deletion? You’ll be charged with interference, maybe treason. They could erase you. Or lock you up in one of those blanked zones where you forget your name.”

“I covered it,” he said quickly. “It’s clean.”

“For now.”

They sat in silence. A gull projection dove overhead, looping like it had been programmed to. The ocean crashed rhythmically against sculpted shorelines designed for balanced sound distribution.

Lina’s voice cracked. “What if she flags again next year?”

Derik watched Mae from across the synthetic tide, now looping her arm around a tall boy and laughing at something he whispered. Derik rubbed the back of his neck. “Then we fix it before it gets that far.”

Lina turned slowly to look at him. “Fix it how?”

He finally met her eyes. “She trusts us. We talk. Guide her thoughts. Help her steer away from unsafe patterns.”

 “You mean teach her to suppress her instincts. Reframe her mind.”

He hesitated. “We’d be doing it with love.”

Lina’s mouth tightened. “That’s what they say in the institutes.”

“This is different.”

“How? Because we wouldn’t be using sedation?” she asked. “No immersive recalibration chamber? Just the same erasure, but with bedtime stories and herbal tea.”

Mae jogged toward them just then, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. “Can I get a stimshake from the kiosk? Theo’s buying.”

“A small one,” Lina said.

“Make it weak,” Derik agreed.

“Okay,” said Mae, darting off quickly, in case they changed their mind.

They watched her disappear into the color-coded crowd.

“She’s curious and bright,” Derik said quietly. “But she lives in a world that doesn’t reward curiosity. It punishes it.”

Lina crossed her arms. “You don’t see the irony, do you?”

He frowned.

“They would erase who she is. You’re just doing it yourself. Gently. Quietly. With fatherly affection.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

“She gets it from me, you know. The questions. The way she thinks sideways.”

Derik blinked. “You?”

“I used to write essays. Back before the scans went mandatory. Before I was vetted for childbearing. I questioned things. The watching. The ranking. I just got good at hiding it.”

A flicker of surprise crossed his face. “You never told me.”

Lina looked toward the shoreline, where Mae now stood, half-lit in the artificial sunlight, laughing with her friends, her hair caught in the controlled breeze.

“I don’t want to lose her either,” she said.

Derik’s throat tightened. “Then help me. Please.”

She didn’t answer for a long moment.

Finally, she reached down for the lemonwater, and took a sip. “One thought at a time,” she said. “And we let her keep as much of herself as we can.”

“Agreed,” Derik said, relieved.

But neither of them noticed the pale drone hovering just above the shade tree—silent, small, its lens glinting.

Recording.

Notes of Grace

The bus hissed to a stop and Grace leapt down the steps, violin case bumping against her coat.

Her fingers, inside woolen gloves, mimed scales and arpeggios with invisible precision as she hurried towards the Juilliard School of Music.

Her dreams were about to be realized. Twelve years in the making. All those hours hunched over sheet music. All the competitions, the rejections, the wins. It had brought her here, to this city, to this moment.

A cold wind tore through her coat as she neared the entrance, hugging the violin case against her side. She was mere steps from the door when her foot slipped, quick and merciless on a patch of black ice. She fell awkwardly, arms flailing, violin case flying from her grasp, hitting the pavement just ahead of her.

She landed hard on top of the case, hand and wrist taking the brunt of the fall.  A sickening crunch followed, along with white-hot pain that exploded through her wrist, shooting up her arm like burning fire.

 

*_*

 

Morning sunlight filtered through the lace curtains in Grace’s childhood bedroom, casting soft patterns on the faded blue walls. She sat by the window in a patchwork robe, right hand wrapped in a stiff brace. A cup of untouched tea cooled on the nightstand beside her.

Her mother appeared in the doorway. “Church starts in twenty minutes,” she said gently. “I can wait if you’d like to come.”

“I’m not going.”

A pause. Her mother’s sigh was soft, but it filled the room like a hollow note.

“All right, honey. We’ll be back by noon.” She hesitated. “You know Pastor David’s been asking about you.”

“Let him ask,” Grace muttered, eyes fixed on nothing as her mother closed the door behind her.

Grace pressed her forehead against the cold glass. She had been home for six weeks. Six weeks of splintered bones, of botched surgeries, and specialists with tired eyes saying maybe she’d recover some mobility but would make no promises.

Her violin case now sat in the back of the closet, untouched, out of sight.

She closed her eyes and whispered bitterly into the silence, “Why did You give me this gift if you just meant to take it away?”

But no answer came.

 

*_*

 

She hadn’t meant to stop at the church. It was just a detour on her walk, a way to stretch her legs and escape the walls that pressed tighter each day. But as she passed the chapel’s old wooden doors, she heard it, violin notes slicing through the air like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Grace winced at the off-key notes. Even as a beginner, she’d never played this poorly. She found herself stepping inside before she could second-guess the instinct.

The sanctuary was dim, sunlight slanted through tall stained-glass windows, dust notes swirling like incense. A boy stood with a violin tucked awkwardly beneath his chin, jerking bow across string in an graceless, stuttering rhythm.

It was painful. And oddly endearing.

He couldn’t have been older than eleven, a skinny kid in a faded hoodie and mismatched socks, the violin clearly too big for him. He didn’t see her enter as he mangled another note. Then another.

                “Whoa,” Grace said, louder than intended.

                The boy lowered the bow, turning toward her voice. His gaze didn’t land. It hovered.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, panic rising. “I know I’m not supposed to be here. I just… I wanted to try it.”

                “I didn’t say stop.” Grace moved closer, curious now. “Where did you get that violin?”

                “Someone left it in the lost-and-found. It’s been there for months.”

“You’re trying to teach yourself to play?” she asked, incredulous.

Grace stared at him as he nodded, taking in the details: the blind eyes, the quiet confidence, the way he cradled the instrument like it mattered.

“And how’s that going?”

His grin was wide and unapologetic. “Terrible. But I love it.”

Something painful shifted in her chest.

                “Do you… know how to play?” he asked, shyly, tilting his head like he could hear the answer in her breathing.

                “I used to,” she said.

                He hesitated. “Would you teach me?”

                Grace opened her mouth to say no, to walk away, to avoid the ache she knew would follow.

                Instead, she said, “I can try.”

 

*_*

 

At first, the lessons were agony.

Not because of Leo. He was eager and bright.

But there was no magic in positioning Leo’s arm to hold the bow correctly, placing his fingers on the strings, pressing her fingers into his as she showed him the notes.

She missed playing. She missed what she used to be.

Worse was the sound. Every squeal, every missed note Leo played felt like a blade drawn across old wounds. A reminder of what she’d lost. Sometimes she had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out.

And through it all, God remained silent.

She still asked the question, late at night, curled in bed with the ache still burning in her bones.

Why did You give me this gift, only to take it away?

Blind Leo didn’t ask questions like that. He just showed up.

Twice a week at the church sanctuary, bundled in layers too thin for winter, with his too-big violin and a smile that never seemed to dim. His fingers fumbled and flailed, but he never quit.

He’d laugh when he missed a note, ask for feedback eagerly, and sometimes, just sit in the pew and listen to Grace hum a melody for him to follow. He didn’t care that she couldn’t play anymore.

He only cared that she was there.

Then, one Thursday afternoon they were working through “Ode to Joy,” and Leo was halfway through the opening when he paused and said, “This part feels like sunshine. Like… when you turn your face to the light.”

Something shifted in Grace’s heart.

He tilted his head. “Is that weird?”

“No,” she said softly. “It’s not weird at all.”

Week by week, she saw it more clearly. Not in the music, but in him. The way he listened, how he struggled through every challenge, not because he thought he’d be great, but because he loved it.

After a while, she no longer heard the mistakes. Instead, she heard the light.

And slowly, unexpectedly, her heart began to thaw in that light.

She started to look forward to the lessons. She found new ways to explain tone and technique without demonstrating. She laughed more. Hummed more. And when Leo got something right, really right, she’d feel a spark in her chest that was almost, almost, like playing again.

One afternoon, after a particularly clumsy run-through, Leo rubbed his temple and groaned, “I’m never going to get this.”

Grace smiled and crouched beside him. “You will. You already are. Better every week.”

He looked toward her voice. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

He was quiet a moment. “You’re a good teacher,” he said.

The words landed in her heart like a note long held, rich and true.

Something deep inside her, something sacred and wounded, healed then, filling her with new purpose.

For the first time in months, Grace didn’t ache to perform.

She ached to teach.

The Silence That Came After - Part 3

 

The silence that came after

Tess stood barefoot on cracked earth, arms raised to the gray, unfeeling sky. She closed her eyes, searching for the pulse, the rush, the heat that used to spark storms with a breath. Her fingertips trembled, anticipating the static charge that used to dance across her skin like a lover’s breath. But the air was inert. Empty.

The wind did not stir. No thunder rumbled in response.

She let her arms fall.

When had it died? That wild, glorious, terrible passion that had once crowned her stormborn? Had she poured it all into the ungrateful dome of Aetherion? Spent it in the rains that drowned Davyd’s village?

With Marcus, she had been lightning in a woman’s body, his touch had ignited her like kindling, his love fed her like oxygen. When she lost him, the storm hadn’t died. It roared. It consumed.

Then came Davyd. Steady, gentle Davyd. He touched her like she was sacred and thought he could hold back the tide. She had clung to him, not out of love, but to silence the void Marcus left behind. It hadn’t worked. Her hunger turned tidal. Her longing became a deluge that could not be controlled, and she’d been banished for it.

Now, the world around her was dry and quiet. The earth was broken. Her soul felt the same.

Time unraveled. Forests reduced to skeletons passed beneath her feet. Riverbeds crumbled like old promises. Once, she found a patch of green and fell to her knees, heart pounding.

She whispered to the clouds. She cursed.  She yelled until her throat tore. Her screams echoed into the void, met only with silence. Time was slipping away, eroding her presence like wind against stone, until all that remained was a shadow of the force she once was.

Night after night, Tess clawed at the past. She lay beneath indifferent stars and recalled Marcus’s teeth against her throat, Davyd’s trembling hands in her hair. She moaned their names into the dirt, touched herself with desperate shaking fingers, begged her body to remember what it meant to burn.

Nothing.

Her body moved, but no current stirred beneath her skin. No spark. No storm.

She began to forget the feel of lightning.

Her skin lost its shimmer. Her hair turned coarse and dull. Her eyes, once violet and glowing, grew pale. Animals fled from her not out of fear, but disinterest.

She stopped moving through the world like it still needed her. Stopped trying to speak to the sky.

Eventually, even her memories dulled. She no longer remembered Marcus’s voice clearly, or the precise way Davyd had said her name. She only remembered the way the rain had tasted on her lips the first time she summoned it with a kiss, how the air had cracked like glass when she came undone.

Now, the air was still, the sky unbroken.

Tess sat alone, knees drawn to her chest, hands cold and silent in her lap.

She wept, but the storm did not come.

Stormborne Part 4

 

Stormborne 

Aetherion never thundered anymore. Not since she left.

Encased beneath its crystalline dome, Aetherion was engineered perfection. Clean, clinical, controlled. Rain fell only when programmed. Winds came in pre-measured sighs. Even thunder had been reduced to sound design, softly piped in through the atmospheric systems for “emotional ambiance.”

For nearly a decade, Marcus Vale had conducted its sky like a silent symphony. Once, he had stood at the pinnacle of Aetherion’s science, hailed as the Chief Harmonist, a title whispered with reverence. He was the maestro of weather, the conductor of the dome’s carefully tuned skies. But now? He was a phantom. A silhouette in a locked office, a faded access badge no one dared deactivate.

He haunted the systems.

No one said her name anymore. Not officially.

Tess Calder.

At first, he had tried to forget her. Had tried to move on. He had allowed them to delete her from public record after she fled the dome. Her face removed from archives. Her work sealed, her research classified. But Marcus remembered it all: the way she stood barefoot on the observation deck, arms spread, calling lightning to her skin like it was a lover.

Tess had been the only untamed thing within the dome, her laughter too loud, her presence too electric. He hadn’t just loved her. He’d felt her in his bones, in every breath, like ozone before lightning. She became stormborne, fused with the very force they had tried to engineer.

And then, because they didn’t understand her, because he didn’t, she was cast out.

The accident had never been an accident. Not really. They were trying to extend emotional resonance into atmospheric systems, pushing the boundary between mind and sky. Tess had gone too far, let herself feel too much. And the sky had responded.

She became a conduit. A catalyst. Stormborne.

He remembered her standing on the edge of the observation platform, arms spread, lightning dancing in her veins. She had laughed at the danger. And gods, he had loved her for it.

Then came the blackouts. The floods. The fear.

He’d let her go. And in doing so, had broken something vital inside himself.

He began studying the accident. Obsessively. He compiled every fragment of data, her neural patterns, resonance curves, biometric spikes.

The committee sealed the files. He broke through the lockouts. Aetherion’s security watched, but no one stopped him. Maybe they were afraid. Maybe they hoped he’d disappear.

He did. He became a ghost in the machine.

Then, one night, through a hazy sleep-deprived dream, a single thought landed like a thunderclap: What if she wasn’t the anomaly? What if she was the key?

What if he could become what she was?

The old lab still smelled of burned copper and sterile regret.

It was sealed under five layers of lockdown, but he got in. Marcus moved through the dark space like a man retracing the steps of a haunting. Dust coated the terminals. The overhead lights flickered to life, one by one, casting long shadows across the cracked floor where she had once stood and changed.

He accessed the system. Her last input still lived in the core, Resonance Pattern Delta, the algorithm she’d written to interface with the sky. No one else had dared run it since.

His fingers trembled as he overrode the safety protocols. Sweat collected at the back of his neck. He stripped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, pulse racing.

The machine hissed to life.

“Warning,” the AI intoned. “Resonance pattern unstable. Critical anomaly risk. Abort advised.”

Marcus closed his eyes. Saw her again. Silver hair charged with static, purple eyes lit like stormlight.

“Execute,” he whispered.

Power surged from the floor, straight into his body. His teeth clenched; every nerve caught fire. Pain like he’d never imagined slammed into him, white-hot, electric, absolute. His heart stopped. Once. Twice. He collapsed to his knees, mouth open in a silent scream.

He should have died.

But he didn’t.

The world went black, and then returned in color too bright, too alive. The hum of the system became sound. He could hear the heartbeat of the dome. Smell the ionized trace of ozone in the air.

When he opened his eyes, the floor beneath his palms pulsed gently with his breath. Sparks danced along his fingertips. His skin crackled faintly, every heartbeat thudding like distant thunder.

He lay there for a long time, shivering, weeping.

The storm was inside him.

Not like hers. Not vast and reckless and untamable. But real.

He could feel her.

Not just in memory, but in resonance.

Somewhere beyond the dome, in the scorched wastelands, she still lived.

*_*

The desert does not forgive.

It chewed through the soles of her feet, pulled at the loose folds of her clothes, leached the water from her breath. Tess moved through it like a sleepwalker, brittle and brittle-boned, the sun peeling her down to her last layers. Her power was gone. Her skin no longer shimmered. Her veins no longer hummed.

She no longer dreamed of storms.

Once, she had made the sky weep. She had burned with passion so fierce the clouds obeyed. But that was a different life. That was when Marcus still looked at her like she was the beginning and end of the world.

She had let him go, because she thought it would protect him. Because she thought she was too much.

Now, she was barely anything at all.

But today… something was different. There was a storm on the horizon.

At first, she thought it was a mirage. A bruise of dark clouds far in the distance. But the clouds didn’t vanish. They grew and moved. And then the wind shifted, not the lazy wheeze of desert air, but movement. Purpose. A gathering.

Her breath caught. This storm… it was real.

It was not hers. But familiar.

She stood frozen on a ridge of red sand, hair tangled and wild, ribs pressing sharp against her wrap. The air began to cool, the scent of rain curling against her skin.

Then, she ran.

Down the slope, through thorn scrub and crumbling stone, her bare feet bleeding, her throat raw from the dry wind. She didn’t stop. Couldn’t.

The clouds boiled overhead now, rolling, electric. Beautiful. Lightning danced in the corners of her vision, a language her body had once known.

He was here. Marcus Vale.

Her steps slowed. What would he see in her? The stormbreaker, yes, but hollowed. A woman too light to cast a shadow. Her hair, once silver and wild with current, now hung limp against her back. Her skin had lost its glow. Her eyes... she hadn't looked at her reflection in months.

His coat was stained with red sand and sun, his boots caked in grit. His hair was longer now, wild. And his eyes, those impossible, amber-colored eyes, were fixed on her like he had walked through fire to find her.

She turned to flee. She couldn’t bear it, his gaze, his disappointment. She was a ruin now. There was no crackle in her touch, no thunder in her voice. Just the memory of a woman who could call the sky to its knees.

“Tess.”

Her name in his mouth broke something in her.

Lightning cracked behind him, soft rain began to fall, gentle, cooling, golden. It soaked into her skin like love.

Standing soaked beneath the storm, his coat plastered to his frame, hair dark and curling, hands loose at his sides like he belonged to the wind now. He turned slowly as she stumbled into the clearing.

Their eyes met.

“Tess.”

The way he said her name again, half-broken, half-beautiful, split her wide open.

“I’m sorry,” she rasped. “I’m not what I was.”

“You’re more,” he said, stepping forward. “You’re here.”

She tried to pull away, to hide herself from the weight of his gaze, but he caught her wrists, gently, reverently, and held them between them. His touch sparked, faint but real. She gasped.

“You…” she breathed, eyes widening in wonder. “You have it.”

“Not like you,” Marcus said, voice low. “But enough to find you.”

His hands cupped her face. “Gods, Tess, you’re still you. Even without the storm.”

She shook her head. “I don’t even know who that is anymore.”

“I do.”

And then he kissed her.

The storm surged as their bodies met.

His mouth devoured hers with hunger and grief and promise. She opened to him, gasping as the first true sensation in months rolled through her, his weight, his warmth, the grounding pressure of his hands on her hips, her back, her thighs.

He pressed her down into the soaked earth, kissed the hollow of her throat, the curve of her breast, the inside of her wrist. She trembled under him, not with fear, but with need.

When he entered her, it was slow, reverent, like prayer. And when her body arched into his, lightning curled above them in spirals, humming with shared desire.

It wasn’t like before.
It was more.

They moved together as the rain fell, again, and again, until they were slick with sweat and wet skin, breathless and tangled, her fingernails carving his shoulders, his mouth murmuring her name like it could save them both.

And somewhere in the rising crescendo of moans and thunder, she felt it.

A flicker. A spark. A stirring deep in her belly, in her bones.

Her body remembered.

The storm had not abandoned her. It had been sleeping, waiting for this. For him.

For them.

She cried out, voice raw and wild, as lightning cracked overhead and her skin lit with violet fire. Her hair lifted, her hands curled into fists, and the clouds above opened like blooming petals.

Rain poured.

Marcus laughed, delighted, awed, as she rose to her knees, naked, glowing, breath heaving. Her eyes blazed violet again. The storm swirled around her like a lover.

He knelt before her, drenched, shaking. “Tess…”

She turned to him, the edge of a smile blooming through tears. “I thought I was gone.”

“You were never gone,” he said. “You were just waiting for the right sky.”

They stayed in the clearing for days. Making love beneath the clouds, curled into one another beneath whispering palms, letting the world around them green with new life. Each kiss brought a breeze. Each touch stirred thunder.

Her power came back not in a single burst, but in waves. Gentle. Fierce. Beautiful. By the end of the week, the desert around them bloomed. And Tess, reborn, rain-drenched, radiant, was no longer lost. She was the storm again. But now she was not alone.

She stood with Marcus, hand in hand, at the edge of something new. And when she looked to the sky, it no longer mourned.

It sang.

What Price, the Rain? (Part 2)

 

What Price the Rain 

The woman appeared like a mirage on the horizon, a silver-haired phantom shimmering in the heat haze. Davyd lowered his binoculars, heart quickening as he tracked her stumbling progress across the dunes. No one survived the wastes alone, not without water, and certainly not in this heat.

"Outsider," he murmured to himself, wondering where she might have come from while calculating trajectories. If he circled east, he might intercept her before she collapsed.

The air seemed to thicken as he approached, like it did in the moments before a storm, if storms still existed in this parched, barren world. The woman staggered; her pale skin luminous against the rust-colored sand. When she fell, faint blue sparks danced where her hands met the earth.

"Easy," Davyd said, kneeling beside her. This close, he could see she was extraordinary. She had long, wispy silver-white hair, her skin was mapped with faint traceries like lightning branches. But her eyes were the most unusual, flickering from electric blue to a deep hued purple as consciousness returned.

"Where am I?" she rasped, voice cracked from thirst.

"The edge of nowhere," he replied cryptically, offering his canteen.

She drank greedily, and it was all he could do not to snatch the precious vessel from her hands. 

"I'm Davyd,” he said, noting how the traces in her skin began to recede with the hydration. “And you're..."

"Tess," she whispered, violet eyes fading to blue as she handed the canteen back to him. "I think... I'm Tess."

“What do you mean, you think?” Davyd tilted his head, studying her face in the harsh sunlight. "That's an odd way to put it."

She looked away, fingers tracing patterns in the sand, patterns that left tiny blue sparks in their wake. "I don't remember much. It's all fragments."

"Nobody survives crossing the wasteland without supplies," Davyd pressed, gesturing to her lack of pack or water. "Yet here you are, alive. How'd you manage that?"

Tess's brow furrowed. Overhead, impossibly, a wisp of cloud formed in the relentless blue sky.

"I don't know," she said finally, frustration edging her voice. "I remember falling. Through darkness and light at the same time. And before that..." She pressed her palms against her temples. "A dome. I lived under a dome. A city made of glass and steel where the weather never changed unless we wanted it to."

"Aetherion," Davyd whispered, eyes widening. Everyone in the wastes had heard legends of the last domed city, a technological paradise that sealed itself off when the world dried up.

Tess's head snapped up at the name. "Yes. That sounds right."

"And how does someone leave paradise?" he asked, not bothering to hide his skepticism.

"Not willingly," she murmured. Her eyes took on a distant look. "There was a man. His name was..." She winced suddenly, as if the memory caused her physical pain. “Marcus," she said after a moment, the name barely audible. "He did something to me. There was a device, and then I was falling." She shook her head. "It doesn't make sense."

Davyd offered his hand, helping her to her feet. As their fingers touched, static electricity crackled between them, sharp enough to make him jerk back in surprise.

"Sorry," she said automatically. "That happens sometimes."

"What happens?" he asked, rubbing his fingers where the shock had stung. He looked up in astonishment. A cloud had formed overhead, a cloud in a sky that hadn't seen proper weather in years.

For a moment, something like recognition flashed in her eyes, then vanished. "Nothing," she said, dismissing the notion.

Davyd didn't press further, but as they began walking toward his village, he noted how the clouds increased, growing slightly larger with each passing hour.

"Tell me more about your dreams, what you remember," he said later that night, after they made camp, and Davyd shared a meal with her beside a fire under the stars.

"They don't feel like dreams," Tess replied, staring into their small fire. "More like... memories underwater. I see a lab with white walls and humming machines. Experiments with weather." She looked up at him, vulnerability plainly visible. "Is that crazy? To experiment with weather?"

"Not crazy," Davyd said softly. "Just impossible. At least out here."

He watched as she unconsciously rubbed the luminous scars on her forearm, scars that seemed to glow brighter as night fell.

"What's the last thing you remember clearly?" he asked.

Tess closed her eyes. "Being up close to the top of the dome. Buffeted by wind and rain. A man's voice calling my name. And then..." She opened her eyes, their color now decidedly purple in the firelight. "Then I was in the sand, and you were there."

Davyd didn't know what to make of her story. Was it delusion, amnesia, or something stranger? But as they sat in silence, the clouds grew darker, and a single drop of moisture, impossible, miraculous, fell between them, sizzling as it hit the fire.

By the third day of their journey, Davyd could no longer deny the transformation overtaking him. It wasn't just her unearthly beauty, though that alone would have been enough, but something more elemental. Each time their hands accidentally brushed while sharing food or navigating difficult terrain, electricity danced between them, leaving his skin tingling for minutes afterward. He found himself manufacturing reasons for these moments of contact, drawn to the strange sensation of her nearness. At night, he lay awake watching her sleep, mesmerized by how the luminous patterns on her skin pulsed in rhythm with her breathing, like a second heartbeat just beneath the surface.

On their final evening before reaching the village, they sat atop a wind-carved mesa, the sunset casting the wasteland in bruised purples and reds. Davyd pointed to a distant dust devil.

"When I was a boy," he said, "my grandmother called those 'thirsty ghosts.' Said they were the spirits of those who died searching for water."

Tess laughed, a full-throated sound that vibrated the air. At the same time a cloud formed, casting a dark shadow across the mesa. Davyd heard the unmistakable rumble of thunder, despite decades of absence, and once again rain fell from the sky.

Davyd gasped in surprise, meeting Tess’s eyes, blazing with purple intensity. In the next moment, her laughter faded, and just as quickly, the rain stopped. The cloud thinned, and the tension dissipated. But something fundamental had changed. He wasn’t sure what, but he knew she was at the center of whatever it was.

The next day, the elders welcomed her without question, offering her one of the empty huts near the dust-choked well.

As the weeks passed, Davyd experimented. Static prickled his skin at a casual touch on her lower back, after which soft clouds gathered. Heated arguments brought distant thunder. And when they finally surrendered to the tension between them, tangled on his thin mattress as his hands explored her luminous skin, the first real rainfall in seven years pattered against his roof.

"It's you," he whispered afterward, watching droplets trace patterns on his window. "You call the storms."

Tess stared at the ceiling. "I remember.” She said, her voice small. “There was an accident. An explosion in the resonance chamber. After that, when I... feel things... the weather responds."

"What kind of things?" Davyd propped himself on one elbow, studying her face.

She met his eyes, challenge and vulnerability warring in her expression. "Emotions. Especially... this."

His village was dying. Fields had been dust for years; children were born who'd never seen rain. The elders prayed to forgotten gods while water rations dwindled weekly. And here, in his bed, lay salvation.

 

*-*

 

The council chamber smelled of dust and desperation. Five elders studied Tess with mingled hope and suspicion, their faces mapped with hardship. She couldn’t read Davyd’s emotions. Pride? Hope? He had brought her here, and she could feel the static humming beneath her skin, responding to their scrutiny, a familiar sensation she was only now beginning to understand.

"You claim to control the weather?" asked the eldest, Amara, her dry voice leaf-thin.

"Not control, exactly." Tess chose her words carefully. "Influence. I can... encourage rain. With focus."

And passion, she thought but didn't say, remembering Davyd's hands on her hips, the storm that followed.

"Our village dies," said another elder, a man with sun-darkened skin and clouded eyes. "Three children died to thirst last season. Our wells are empty. If you can truly bring rain..."

"I can," Tess said with more confidence than she felt. "With practice, I can manage it."

The memories were returning piecemeal: the lab's sterile white light; the resonance chamber's hum; Marcus's voice, clinical yet somehow tender, guiding her through the experiment. Then the accident, and afterward, the storms that came with passion.

"We propose a contract," Amara said, unrolling a parchment map of dust-choked riverbeds. "Restore our lands, and you will have a home here. Honor beyond measure. Anything you desire."

Anything I desire. The words echoed as Tess signed their contract with a spark-inducing flourish. What she desired was control, over the power that had exiled her from Aetherion, over the chaos inside her. This was her chance to prove Marcus wrong, to show that she wasn't merely a walking disaster.

"I won't let you down," she promised.

For three months, it worked. They built her an alter where Tess learned to channel her emotions with precision, summoning gentle rains that soaked into the parched earth without flooding. She built a routine, meditation at dawn, then a careful climb to the altar where she would focus on controlled desire, pleasuring herself with touch or thought.

The village transformed. Green shoots pushed through long-barren soil. Children splashed in puddles; laughter ringing through the streets. Nearby the river gurgled to life, a myth to the youngest generation. Davyd watched her with something beyond desire now, a reverence that made her uncomfortable.

As the seasons turned, the initial wonder of Tess's gift began to warp into something darker. The village elders, once reverent, now approached her with lists of demands: rain for the eastern fields, but sunshine for the western orchards; a dry spell for the harvest, followed immediately by downpours to replenish the aquifer.

"We need a frost by week's end," Mara insisted one morning, her tone brooking no argument. "The fruit trees won't set properly otherwise."

Tess rubbed her temples, feeling the static build beneath her skin. "I can't just…"

"Can't?" Amara's eyes narrowed. "Or won't?"

That evening, Davyd found Tess atop her weather altar, her hair crackling with unspent energy.

"They're ungrateful," he said, his hands kneading her shoulders roughly. "After everything you've given them."

Tess leaned into his touch, craving the release it promised. "It's getting harder," she admitted. "Like trying to hold back a flood with my bare hands."

Davyd's fingers tightened, almost painfully. "So don't hold back." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Show them your true power. Make them remember why they feared storms in the first place."

She turned to face him, seeing the hunger in his eyes, not just for her, but for what she could do. It should have frightened her. Instead, it sent a thrill down her spine.

"Show me," he breathed.

His kiss was bruising, demanding. Above them, the clouds darkened ominously.

Weeks later, as lightning split an ancient oak and torrential rain flooded the lower fields, Davyd laughed in exhilaration.

"More!" he shouted over the gale. "Show them what a real storm looks like!"

*-*

Six months later, the village elders approached Davyd after a particularly violent downpour collapsed the newly rebuilt granary.

"This arrangement isn’t working," Amara said.

"She's still learning control," Davyd defended, ignoring the unease in his gut. "The harvests are better than ever."

"At what cost?" asked the blind elder. "The river has overflowed three times this month. Fields are waterlogged. And yesterday's lightning sparked a fire in the southern fields."

"I'll speak with her," Davyd promised.

But that night, when he suggested restraint, Tess laughed, a sound like splintering wood. "Restraint? That's what Marcus always preached." She stretched languidly on his bed, electricity crackling along her skin. "Don't you prefer me wild?"

He did. Gods help him, he did. Instead of urging caution, he leaned into her addiction, encouraging her excesses, celebrating her power, ignoring the escalating damage. When a storm washed away the eastern fields, he blamed poor irrigation. When lightning shattered the village's newly installed solar panels, he commissioned another altar, grander than the first.

A year passed. The once-barren village now struggled with the opposite extreme, oversaturation. Fields turned to marshlands. Mold crept through storehouses. The river, once prayed for, became a menace that regularly breached its banks.

And Tess... She was radiant in her addiction. She spent hours atop her altar bringing electrical storms, arms outstretched, laughing as lightning danced around her. She spoke less of Marcus now but sometimes called Davyd by that name in her sleep. When he confronted her about the destruction, she shrugged.

"You wanted a goddess," she said, her eyes flashing dangerously. "This is what gods do."

The breaking point came during harvest. A monstrous storm descended upon the village with Tess at its eye. Davyd found her atop the altar, drenched and ecstatic as eighty-mile winds tore roofs from houses.

"Tess, you must stop this!" he screamed over the gale. "You're killing us!"

For a moment, recognition flickered in her electric eyes. Then her expression hardened.

"You used me," she said coldly. "You’re the one who stoked this fire. You can’t complain now that it burns."

The village council met by torchlight that night, their faces grim as they reviewed the contract.

"She has violated her terms," Amara declared. "The rains were to restore life, not destroy it."

"Where will she go?" Davyd asked, his voice hollow.

"Where she was found," the blind elder replied. "Take her to the wastelands."

Dawn painted the flooded village in sickly orange light. Tess stood at its edge, belongings bundled, face impassive as Amara read the decree of exile. Villagers clutched protective amulets, keeping their distance from her crackling aura.

Davyd stepped forward when it was done. "I never meant…”

"Yes, you did," Tess interrupted softly. "You saw a weapon and used it. Don't pretend otherwise."

"I loved you," Davyd insisted, reaching for her.

Static jumped between them, sharp enough to make him recoil.

"No," she said sadly. "You loved the storm."

They watched her walk into the desert, silver hair billowing. Above her, clouds gathered, following like loyal pets. The rains would continue elsewhere, Davyd knew, for someone else. Another village, another altar, another man who thought he could harness a tempest.

Eventually, the drought would return. They would thirst again, pray again, perhaps even speak her name in desperate whispers. But as Tess vanished into the haze, Davyd understood at last: some salvation came at too high a price.

Behind him, through still-flooded streets, the villagers began the work of rebuilding what their miracle had destroyed.

The Heart of the Storm Part 1

The Heart of the Storm     

    

The first crack of lightning split the sky as Tess Calder rolled onto her back, chest heaving, skin slick with sweat. The sheets tangled around her legs; the faint scent of ozone mingled with the musky heat of their bodies. She stared up at the glass ceiling of her penthouse, where storm clouds churned like ink in water, dark and restless against the faint glow of Aetherion’s dome. 

Beside her, Marcus shifted, propping himself on one elbow. His fingertips trailed lazily over the curve of her hip, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. “That’s… new,” he murmured, his voice rough from exertion. 

Tess turned her head toward him, her silver hair spilling across the pillow like liquid mercury. “What is?” 

He nodded toward the sky. “The storm.” 

She followed his gaze. The clouds were swirling faster now, lightning flickering in jagged veins illuminating the dome’s sleek surface. Rain began to patter against the glass, soft at first but quickly building into a steady drumbeat. 

Marcus frowned, his brow furrowing as he watched the spectacle unfold. “We don’t get storms like this unless the AI triggers them for maintenance or cooling cycles.” His fingers stilled on her skin. “It’s almost like…” He trailed off, shaking his head as if dismissing a foolish thought. 

Tess stretched languidly, a satisfied smile tugging at her lips. Her body still hummed with the aftershocks of their passion, a low-level vibration she couldn’t quite place but didn’t want to lose. “Maybe it’s just a glitch,” she said lightly, though a strange tingle coursed through her veins; a sensation that felt oddly familiar yet entirely new. 

Marcus didn’t respond. His gaze lingered on the storm as thunder rolled through the city, deep and resonant enough to rattle the glass walls of their bedroom.

 Three nights later Marcus brought it up again. They’d barely made it to bed before tearing into each other; his hands gripping her waist, her nails raking down his back as they moved together in a rhythm as old as time itself. The air between them was charged, electric, every touch igniting sparks that leapt from their skin to the room around them.

When it was over, Tess lay sprawled across his chest, her breath warm against his collarbone. Outside, another storm raged, this one more violent than before. Wind howled against the dome; lightning flashed so brightly it painted their bodies in stark relief against the darkened room.

Marcus tilted his head to look at her, his expression unreadable in the flickering light. “Have you noticed it yet?” he asked quietly.

“Noticed what?” she replied lazily, tracing idle patterns on his chest with her fingertips.

“The storms.” He shifted beneath her so they were eye to eye. “They only happen after… us.”

Tess laughed softly, dismissively. “You’re imagining things.”

“Am I?” Marcus’s tone sharpened slightly as he sat up, dislodging her from his chest. He gestured toward the window where rain lashed against the glass in sheets. “This isn’t normal, Tess.”

She frowned but said nothing, unwilling to acknowledge the truth in his words.

By the end of the week, denial was no longer an option.

Every time they came together, every kiss that left her breathless, every moan that echoed through their apartment, the weather outside mirrored their intensity. Thunderheads gathered with alarming speed; winds battered Aetherion’s carefully balanced infrastructure; lightning danced across the dome like a lover’s caress.

It was Marcus who finally connected the dots.

“You were right next to it when it overloaded,” he said one night after pulling away from yet another fevered embrace.

Tess blinked at him in confusion, still dazed from their encounter. “What are you talking about?”

“The resonance chamber,” he clarified grimly. “The day it failed in the lab, you were standing right there when it discharged.”

She sat up slowly as memories flooded back: the blinding flash of light; the deafening hum that had vibrated through every molecule of her body; stumbling out of the chamber with static crackling through her hair and an odd warmth radiating from within.

“You think…” She trailed off as realization dawned.

“I don’t think,” Marcus said firmly. “I know.” He gestured toward her with an almost accusatory air. “Whatever happened in that lab, it changed you.”

At first, Tess tried to resist, to suppress whatever connection she had to Aetherion’s weather systems by keeping herself calm and controlled. But every time Tessa’s passion flared, whether in laughter, anger, or love, the skies reflected her mood.

The storms weren’t just accidents or side effects, they were extensions of herself: wild and untamed manifestations of everything she felt but couldn’t contain.

And oh, how she came to love it.

Each time she gave in, to let herself feel without restraint, the skies responded with a ferocity that left her breathless and exhilarated.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Marcus tried to caution her. “Think about the balance! What if one day, you can’t stop it?”

But she wouldn’t listen.

Tess’s cravings escalated. She sought more ways to ignite her electromagnetic surges: pleasuring herself when Marcus was away, adrenaline-fueled feats like base jumping from the dome’s upper catwalks, racing through underlit tunnels on hover-bikes, even daring to override the city’s safety protocols just for the thrill. Every spike in her pulse triggered savage weather above.

The city suffered for it. Storms battered Aetherion’s dome, power grids flickered under relentless strain; lesser structures buckled beneath unrelenting winds, but Tess didn’t care.

For once in her carefully controlled life, she felt alive.

“Tess!” Marcus’s voice cut through wind and rain as he climbed toward her atop Aetherion’s highest spire, lightning rods humming ominously around them like living things waiting for release.

She turned toward him slowly, her silver hair whipping around her face as jagged arcs of electricity danced along her outstretched arms, violet eyes glowing brighter than any lightning bolt above.

“You have to stop!” Marcus shouted over deafening thunder as he clutched a portable dampener, a last-ditch effort designed specifically for neutralizing electromagnetic anomalies like hers.

There was a wicked smile playing on her lips, as if she embraced the storm’s fury as part of her very soul. “You can’t stop me,” she called back, her voice steady despite the tumult around her. “I was born for this.”

Marcus activated the neutralizer. A searing flash exploded around Tess, momentarily stripping away the wild energy that surrounded her. In that moment, the world seemed to pause: the swirling storm, the pounding rain, the echo of Marcus’s desperate plea, the charged air that still clung to Tess like a second skin. For a single, suspended heartbeat, the storm abated as the arcs on her skin dimmed and her violet eyes softened with a flicker of uncertainty.

But then, the storm intensified, and Tess’s gaze hardened. “Nothing’s changed, Marcus,” she snarled, her voice slicing through the electric air. The words dripped with bitter resolve as torrents of rain carved down her porcelain cheeks, each drop glowing in the erratic flashes of lightning.

“I am the storm,” she said, and with a breathtaking, heart-stopping leap, Tess hurled herself into the void.

Marcus’s anguished cry was drowned by the tempest as Tess disappeared into the rain and lightning. He stood there, gripped by the searing ache of loss and the lingering terror of a love that had become as uncontrollable as the storm itself. Would he ever see her again, or had she become a myth, forever woven into the heart of the storm?