Often associated with these terms and concepts was the notion of a cloud dynasty, a political structure characterized by a system of hierarchy and power based around cloud class or caste (often classified as the Four Castes of Forecast: Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus, and Nimbus, though others did exist), each with their own characteristic approach, opinion, outlook and position toward the continents.
Generally, the lower altitude classes (the towering clouds) were imperialistic by nature, capable of employing devastating tactics (including the "wind axe", “hurricane shears”, and "shelf of anvil") to establish continental dominion. When settlements proved resistant to these external forces, a type of occupied convection could also be utilized, whereby the inner weather (metabolic currents and vapor pressure) of living bodies could be overthrown and controlled by coordinated agents within. This type of "puppet state" could be cultivated without the knowledge of the affected persons, effectively allowing cloud regimes to conduct the powers and population of the continents according to their own needs. This practice was typically used to incite surface disappearances and disturbances, a form of ambush and invasion known as "faded vassalage" or "full grown fog."
By contrast, representatives of the higher ranges of altitude (the mother clouds) showed greater terrestrial allegiance, and on occasion, may have even exhibited clear compassion toward the continents. Given proper sacrifice and devotion, certain clans of vapor were known to reward inhabitants of the continent with decorations and companions, such as auroras, sun dogs, and halos. These phenomena were seen as temporary distractions and compensation to some, and considered as holy covenants to others.
The term Forecast was believed to have first been used to describe the spread and effects of the Glacial Century, a lower-altitude cloud kingdom whose power came primarily from the use of climate sickness. Recovery from this event took many eras (for generations the term Forecast itself simply referred to any type of atmospheric supremacy, in either the commercial or military sense of the word "supremacy"), with the effects leaving a lasting impression upon continental memory. Indeed, many successive settlements prophesied the inevitable return of such cloud dynasties, and spoke to the need to counter these and similar incarnations of weather despotism by openly denying the authority of meteorological rule, declaring independence from all conditions and conquests of the sky, and demanding the continents and their collective territories be known and acknowledged as the fifth and final class of Forecast, the "Free Reign of Forever's Rest."
They decorated her remains with escape clauses and expiration dates, a row of arrows through the skin. They asked for a warm body to replace a need elsewhere, a marker of muscle and a moistened gauze.
For seven weeks, one by one, she cut her wrists into kites and string. The thunder was a torn cast, a toy model opening and closing. It came from everywhere, nothing for color to cheapen or heal, a non-zero recovery again.
Her sickness was trespassing, a mesh prepared over the skin, when it was it was the most of her, there was only a a lottery of fog to tell the difference between day and night again.
She told them the clouds were broken ornaments without a box, they weren’t even close. She said the sky was replaced by means of riot control, they threw it in a back room, probably burned it.
She gave me a reason. I knew what veins and evaporation she was trying to wear.
I waited for her in a white cornered room, in between cabinets, crouching, listening. I was little more than a torso, with or without legs. At most an extra arm, shoulders and a patch of hair. Nearly invisible, no sky marrow, either partial or total.
She separated herself in embryonic underdevelopments, her eyes loosened and widely spaced. Her skin was muted, semi-permanent, pulled apart by rubber and heat. If she was sinking or sunken or still a circus mirror where the conditions met. I didn’t know. They put her on a saline drip and said she started to improve, stopped vomitting, started drinking water and milk. She showed a normal spinal curve for once, the kind held still by someone with even their good overcasts gone.
She told me it was over, and I watched her. She went and made a small meal and saw four suns now. Another typical forecast and all I could think of a was less crowded sky where her sickness came even closer.
“A strainer or shut off device, displayed like eyelids and used to clear or drain her face.”
ReplyDelete“Just dangled before her in a mass of limbs from the middle of her chest.”