Orla had felt it coming closer for three weeks.
It had started as a subtle warmth in her palms.
Barely there at all something she might have easily missed if she hadn't been paying attention but she was always paying attention that was the thing about her gift it never fully switched off The weather moved through her like a second heartbeat.
A constant,
Low awareness in her body of what was gathering,
What was shifting,
What was on its way.
Most of the time,
It was ordinary.
She felt the rain coming the night before she knew when a frost would hit before the temperature had even begun to drop.
And she could tell you to within half an hour when the wind would drop.
Villagers found it useful,
But to Orla,
It was just a part of how she moved through the world.
She had never wished it away She had never wished she were different.
It was hers.
And she was glad of it.
But this time,
It was different to anything she had felt before.
She new storms she knew the cold electric tightening before lightning the heavy pressure of snow building in clouds two days out.
And the particular restless ache in her shoulders that meant wind was coming.
But this,
This was something she had no name for It had been building for weeks,
Rolling closer across the world.
To Orla,
Its approach felt like no other weather she had ever known.
It was a deep,
Spreading warmth moving through her palms and up through her arms and into her chest.
Not the sharp heat of lightning weather.
Something slower something deeply inexplicably calm.
It had been difficult to go about her days with it building.
She'd found herself stopping in the middle of ordinary things just to feel it.
Pausing on the path to the village standing at the stove with her tea going cold or sitting at her table,
Staring at nothing just to let it move through her for a moment The warmth of it was unlike anything else she'd felt.
It didn't spike or surge the way storm weather usually did.
It just grew slowly and steadily calmer,
Yet richer the way the sky deepens in color as the sun goes down so gradual,
You almost miss it and then you look up and everything has changed It had been the most extraordinary thing she had ever felt with her gift.
And she had been feeling weather her whole life.
But her teacher had told her about it once long ago.
There will come a storm.
She had said.
That fills you with the deepest calm you have ever felt.
Go to the hilltop when it comes.
Don't wait.
All I have never forgotten it.
And tonight,
Standing at her cottage window,
She felt something shift.
A deepening,
A gathering.
It was close now.
It would come tonight.
She put on her coat she didn't bring anything else No lantern.
She didn't need one.
She knew this past.
And no food no water just herself and her coat and the pull in her chest drawing her up toward the hill.
The village was quiet when she passed through it one window lit on the far side of the square A dog was barking somewhere briefly,
Then settled.
Then there was nothing but the cold street and the old stones.
She liked the village at this hour the way it folded into itself,
All its busyness packed away for the night.
Everybody warm and sleeping.
No one but Orla knew that something extraordinary gathered itself on the hill above them.
She moved through the square and took the path north.
The trail up to the hilltop was one she had walked a thousand times.
Typically,
In winter,
It was hard going.
Ground frozen in places,
The heather stiff and pale,
The path narrow between the dark banks of it.
But a night she barely noticed the climb.
The warmth in her chest was pulling her forward.
The way of fire draws you toward it on a cold evening.
She moved through the dark quickly and easily,
Her breath making small clouds in the cold air.
She thought about her teacher as she walked.
The same gift and run through her too.
Orla wondered if she had made the same climb on a night like this,
The same pull in her chest drawing her up through the dark.
The valley fell away below her as she climbed Lights of the village were distant and small.
The heather around her feet was frost-pale and still,
Every stem holding the cold of a long winter.
And the sky above was dark and clear,
At least at first.
And then,
At the horizon,
There was something else.
Not lightning,
Not the grey-white of ordinary clouds but a deep,
Impossible blue-green moving as she watched rolling slowly over the edge of the world toward her colors that she had never known to be in any night sky.
Or less stopped walking She stood very still.
Then she put her hands out at her sides palms open,
The way she always did when she wanted to feel weather more clearly.
It moved into her palms immediately.
That same warmth but so much stronger now spreading up through her arms and into her chest in a long,
Slow wave.
Relaxing softening soothing as it went she closed her eyes for a moment just feeling it the scale of it.
The amazing gentleness of something so vast then she opened her eyes and watched it arrive it moved across the sky the way weather always moves.
With the particular authority of things that answer to nothing the colour deepened as it approached blue-green at the edges,
Shading into a deep and extraordinary violet at the center.
Shot through with threads of silver that moved and shifted like light through deep water.
She had never seen anything like it she had never felt anything like it not in all her years of reading weather not in anything her teacher had described.
Not in any story she'd ever heard.
This was beyond all of that she started walking again eager to be closer her pace was slow and calm her mind settled into the feeling of the storm mixing with her gift.
With every step the calm of it deepens.
Tightness released and ease and lightness replaced the lost tension,
Allowing her body to soften in a way she couldn't remember it ever doing before.
By the time she reached the top of the hill,
The storm was almost overhead the air had changed completely warmer than midwinter had any right to be.
And felt different against her skin softer heavier.
And more alive in a way ordinary air simply wasn't.
She tipped her face up to the sky.
Out the wind on her cheeks.
Heard the heather crunch beneath her boots.
A whole hilltop held its breath.
And then the rain began was not like any rain she had ever stood in.
The first drops reached her upturned face,
And she gasped.
It was warm.
Each drop was so warm the way the earth is warm in high summer beneath bare feet orla held out her hands The rain fell into her open palms,
And she felt it move through her immediately.
Not just on her skin,
But deeper.
Spreading slowly up through her wrists and into her arms her whole body softened even deeper with it.
Every remaining piece of tension in her body.
Released itself in that instant her shoulders drop.
Her jaw unclenched.
All aside,
Slowly and deeply.
And she felt something release in her all the way down to her soul.
She breathed in.
Even the smell of it soothed her rain and warm earth mixed with the scent of an abundant flower garden in the full bloom of high summer.
Impossible in midwinter,
But the sweet,
Laurel smell was unmistakable.
She breathed it in and out.
In.
And out sinking into the calm that seemed laced into the scent with every breath.
Above her,
The sky moved through its impossible colors.
The violet deepened at the center The silver threads multiplied and spread,
Weaving through the clouds like roots through soil.
And where the rain fell on the heather around her,
Something began to happen slowly impossibly beautifully the heather bloom.
Every stem.
Every frost-pale branch pushing out color in the dark.
Deep purple and rose,
And a soft white she had never seen in Heather before.
It spread outward from where she stood in a slow,
Wide ring,
Moving across the hilltop in every direction.
The whole maw coming into flower in the middle of winter.
In the middle of the night.
Aula turned slowly where she stood,
Taking it in.
The hilltop was in full bloom.
She loved.
And the sound of it went out across the moor into the warm,
Extraordinary rain that was somehow waking the winter-sleeping Heather.
The beauty of the flowers beneath the colored sky was mesmerizing.
Storms usually thrilled her,
But as the wind blew through her hair,
As she watched the silver frost-covered land melt away into purple and white.
And swept every last thought from her mind.
And left only the most profound peace she had ever known.
She stood within it all for a long time the rain fell warm on her the heather bloomed all around her feet bathe in the storm's incredible light and the sky moved in slow,
Swirling swathes of silver-threaded color.
She thought of her beloved teacher once again.
Aula truly hoped she had stood somewhere like this.
Hoped she had tipped her face up to this same rain and felt it move through her,
Just as it did all her nails.
She hoped.
It had felt like this for her too.
This enormous,
Simple,
Extraordinary peace.
At some point She sat down in the heather.
She hadn't decided to her legs simply folded gently beneath her and the heather welcomed her softly the storm's warmth in every stem and petal.
Rising up around her like an embrace She sat for a while with her hands in the flowers.
Feeling the petals soft and real.
But entirely impossible.
The white ones especially had never seen white heather like this,
Never heard of it.
And here it was growing,
Warm and real,
Beneath her hands on a frozen hilltop.
She ran her fingers through it slowly,
And the warmth of it moved through her fingertips,
Up through her hands.
And she felt her eyes growing heavy he looked out across the moor the bloom stretched further than she could see clearly in the dark a vast carpet of color covering the whole hill moving in the softest possible way in the warm rain The valley below was entirely hidden by the storm's colors.
There was only the hilltop and the heather.
The vast sky above her.
And the feeling of being exactly where she was supposed to be.
At exactly the right moment.
She put her hands flat on the dark earth beneath the heather.
Felt the warmth there too deep in the ground beneath her palms.
The magical rain soaking slowly down through the roots of everything.
Warming the whole hill from within.
Her gift was very quiet now she could still feel the storm moving above her still feel it in her palms and her chest.
But it was quieter than she had ever known it settled into something deep and still.
The way the world settles in the hour after dusk.
Aula lay back slowly into the heather it held her easily,
All those thousands of small branches and petals embracing her the tiny flowers soft against the back of her neck and her hands and her hair.
The storm moved slowly above her She watched it with soft,
Heavy eyes.
The violet the deep blue green a silver threading through it like rivers and streams.
She noticed the rain falling warm and slow onto her skin each drop a small spreading warmth,
Softening her a little further.
She thought of nothing in particular Thoughts did come,
But then they passed on like clouds moving through the color-strewn sky above her.
She didn't hold any of them Paula slowly closed her eyes and let herself go into the moment.
Into the feeling of simply being.
Her face softened in the warm rain her shoulders and back released her arms grew heavy against the heather her hands opened fingers loose her chest rose and fell slow and even her whole body sank deeper and deeper into the Earth's gentle holes.
With every breath,
She felt herself grow heavier.
Sink deeper into stillness drift further into an inner pool of peace.
She inhaled and exhale.
Long and slow.
The sky.
The hilt up.
The heather blooming warm all around her she was hell he was safe nothing but relaxation and contentment affect.
Soft Heather cushioned her.
The warm rain.
Soft now.
So soft settled over her like a blanket.
And Aula slap.
Deeply peacefully beneath the vast and swirling sky on the hilltop in the rain while all around her,
The heather bloomed on
