storm

The sun had completely disappeared, and dark, ominous clouds loomed low and gray, filled with the promise of something exciting, something terrifying.  She braved her way through the back-up of traffic leading up to the freeway, jostling for road space among the rest of the populace eager to make their way home before the storm hit.  On the freeway, she hit the accelerator just a little harder than usual, a mild anxiety forming unwittingly in the pit of her stomach.  There was a stillness in the air.  Not a leaf moved on the trees.  Not a breeze blew in the air.  As she sped along, suddenly out of nowhere, there was a huge, angry flash of light seemingly right in front of her.  Her heart missed a beat.  It was large, it was angry, it was terrifying.  The flash of light illuminated the darkness that had descended like a scene from some sci-fi movie.  For a second, time seemed to stand still.  In the next instant, there was a heart-stopping, deafening roar ripping through the blackness that was sky.  It was so loud, the earth shuddered uncontrollably.  And sure enough, in the very next instant, the now sheer black sky was ripped open by another humongous flash of white, hot light, and the heavens spilled their heaving bounty onto the reeling earth.

The knot in her stomach tightened as she ploughed through the deluge.  Her face was tight with the tension of concentration.  The wipers were on full blast, and yet there were just microseconds of visibility in the almost unbelievable scene that was unfolding around her.  Suddenly there added to the stress the possibility of random people slowing down their vehicles on the freeway.  The worst possible thing to do on a freeway is to suddenly slow down when you are absolutely unsure of what speed the rest of the vehicles are moving at.  And, as if to purposely distract from the task of figuring that out, the heavens continued the incredible sound and light show in a manner that made it impossible to not watch in wide-eyed wonder.

So huge a thing is nature.  So small a thing was she.  For the entire time that the skies unleashed their insides onto the unsuspecting earth, she was captivated, in that excited, terrified way...watching helplessly as the scene morphed from one spectacular show to the next.

Much later, the air was still once more.  This time, the sun had returned from its hiatus.  The black clouds were a thing of the past.  The sky was blue once more.  The earth was wet, and green and quenched.  She marveled at the whole episode.  She smiled at the memory of minutes ago.  At how she had been uncertain of how to deal with a multitude of potential eventualities in such a situation.  At how fragile we all really are, in the larger scheme of things.  At how, despite the magnitude of the storm, it had actually been exciting to watch.  And suddenly, right there in front of her, as if to make up for any inconvenience it might have caused moments before, the heavens put forth a most delightful, a most wonderful little gift to the earth, to us mere mortals....a single, huge, multi-coloured rainbow....touching the earth here....extending to way beyond the sky there...and, watching this sight of beauty, her breath caught in her chest once more.