A Summer Storm

  The air smelled sweet on the breeze, as it slipped between branches and under leaves. Two butterflies danced around each other in delighted loops. And the clouds, what there were of them, were small and white, puffy and without a trace of rain.

     Such perfection was not to remain, for it wasn't long before a gust of wind came from the South and blew the butterflies apart.
 
     A sound crumbled in the air and echoed in the distance. Thunder. And then came the wind in great big bellows blowing through the golden fields that were soon covered in a thick gray sky.  Thunder again, and this time the lightening cut, bright white and vibrant against the backdrop of dark, dismal clouds.

     The first drops were heavy, laden with the weight of a hundred tears.  They splashed against dust.  

     This was the third sign of what was to come, and it was then that the butterflies headed it, fleeing desperately for some dry hollow. And in their flight, each lost the other, and wound up in hollows all alone. No drop had hit their delicate wings, but separated as they were, they could not help but mourn.
 
     As one rain drop fell after another, the water made rivulets through the dry dirt. Dirt turned to mud as the storm swirled in and the sky opened to floods. Wind moved through the trees, swaying even the largest trunks, as leaves, deadened from summer’s heat, fell to the ground to be washed away in sludge. Golden crops, now sodden, bent nearly to breaking with the weight of the heavy rain. Grasses rattled until drenched with the downpour. And summer flowers crumpled under the pounding water.
 
     Each butterfly, in its separate hollow, swayed with the trees, and looked in sorrow from sheltered perches, in awe of a world so greatly changed.
 
     But it was a short-lived sorrow. For, as suddenly as it had begun, the rain ceased. The sky, having rained itself out, grew clear. The drops that fell were no longer from clouds, but off trees and shrubs and stalks. The sun broke through escaping clouds and beamed glowing warmth on the sodden ground. The leaves of the trees shook off their puddles, and the drenched grasses shifted in tilt toward the radiating light. The wilted flowers turned their faces, and bent crops raised their grains as if in salute to the great, golden orb.
 
     The dripping slowed until one butterfly and then the other tested a beat of their wings, free from their shelters. Each saw around them foliage crystalized with beaded water, and each saw the flowers raise their drying petals. The mud on the damp earth lay drying, and beckoned them out, out and through the air.  

     Then each saw the other and danced about in joy. For they were no longer alone, and the air smelled far sweeter than before; the trees felt more alive, and the flowers more jolly. And it seemed that the day was all the better for having had a storm.

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