The Bear and Barnacle

Rincewind winced as another powerful gust of wind buffeted the pub. It had been raining for days, and from what he had heard from other patrons, it wasn’t going to let up any time soon. He was mooching around in the back rooms of the pub. It was far too wet to even think of going outside. ( Read more... )

Rivers of water poured off the roof, cascading past the windows into the mud that, until recently, was a small herb garden.

The house was old enough to creak and make occasional noises as it was. With the wind and rain pounding at it for days and days, the house was practically playing a symphony. Lucius normally enjoyed the rain, at the Manor. He and Narcissa would use the foul weather as an excuse to lock themselves into the library...or the bedroom. He sighed and sipped at his glass of wine, looking out the window at the storm. Several books lay haphazardly strewn open along the table, a reminder of failed attempts to distract him.

This wasn't the Manor. It was a small (to him), dark, empty house, not his home. And, most importantly, there was no Narcissa. He was trapped in this place with no one, no connection to his former life.

Despite the roaring fire in the fireplace, he shivered with a cold that ran much deeper than his skin.

The Jokers stringy green hair whipped in the biting wind, and he blinked the dripping water out of his eyes.

It had been raining for what seemed like forever, the water was now puddled up everywhere in the town, and there were streams running along every street, some almost small rivers. It was cold, it was miserable...and he was smiling.

The particular street he was standing on happened to be slanted downward, right through the main section of Margate businesses. And each gutter had it's own mini-Nile flowing, one to his right and one to his left. And swimming merrily down each river, right past the buildings, were hundreds of rubber ducks.

With laughter that could be heard even over the howling winds, he jumped into his waiting innertube and hydroplaned down the hill with his tiny yellow minions flanking him.

He stands there, getting wet and wetter, but instead of hurrying inside - fixing himself a caffè, now that he's learnt how to, instead of grabbing one of those lush towels, or better yet: lounging away the rest of the day, snug in a fauteuil, swirling Armagnac - he walks away from the door, back into the rain.

He doesn't look where he's going until he bumps into a bench, shin first. Cesare takes that for a sign - isn't the sky full of portents? - and sits, getting wet and wetter, the glasses clutched in his hand as if they were a saint's relic.

Looking heavenwards, all he sees are fleeing shapes, panicked and wheeling, twisted by an invisible force and trampled by the throng. The shapes in the clouds remind him of something. Something he's seen, somewhere. He vaguely remembers being angry ( then. )

This would be hard enough, he thinks, if it were only raining. The wind turning his clothes from protection from the elements into a nearly rhythmic series of cold wet slaps makes it about forty times worse.

At least Val was a huge help, crawling around the roof marking all the places where water was coming through (they can't keep him off the roof, so they figured he might as well be useful). The chalk is washing down the shingles in thin lumpy streaks, but at least he can follow them to their source most of the time. They had to wrap him up in twine and one of Jack's shirts so the wind wouldn't catch his wings and tear them off.

Sure, the estate agent warned them. "The roof's a bit leaky," she said. She couldn't have been expecting monsoon season ... but the fact remains that they had to venture out to the hardware store to buy more buckets.

The bedrooms are already mostly patched up. Now he's over the kitchen. "A bit leaky." Ridiculous.

He labors away, exhausted but determined and spurred by the knowledge that inside this house there is always, always hot black coffee.

Xellos stands at the window, staring into the punishing grey skies, beating the pavement down and whipping the earth into submission, the drumroll of water elbowing other thoughts from his mind.

As though in a dream, he walks upstairs to the bedroom, takes off his boots, twitches back the curtains, and steps out into the nook below the roof. Instantly drenched, he turns his face up, hair plastered to his face and nearly black with water. Opening his mouth to drink down the heavens, he breathes in great gulps of fizzling, tangy ozone, guzzling down the air until he's lightheaded and it hums in his blood.

He climbs up onto the railing. Stands there a minute, arms spread wide. Then, in a whirling, gold-speckled explosion of purple-grey, he jumps.

When life gives you thunder, make love to the sky.

The winds come first, howling and gusting and making the residents of Margate feel almost as though they are standing in water where powerful currents crash with cool, silent might into one another. Umbrellas turn inside out; scarves writhe like snakes hell-bent for liberty around their owners' necks. Leaves are driven sliding across the ground with rasps like the tines of a rake on pavement, and the waves of the sea hurl their humped, enraged shoulders at the sandy shore and dash themselves to pieces against it with angry splashes of spray.

Then come the rains, the sort of endless rain, too steady to be musical, that disguises anything, running footsteps or crunching gravel or the drums of headhunters coming to slay the good people in their beds. Windows turn into portals to a watery world. If anyone dares to venture out in such weather, the wind drives the rain into faces and down collars and instantly through cloth, until it's like a sharp barrage of latex-free water balloons.

Water pours from eaves as though from a pitcher. Lawns are churned to mud; the beach is like quicksand. Gutters are rivers. Roofs develop vengeful leaks and doormats dissolve. Rain boots fill and tip over and are lost in the mud, to be dug up perhaps when, in some distant future, the world dries out.

A tropical cyclone, maybe? The satellite views seem to show one. But this is Kent. This is England. In this cold the word "tropical" seems obscene. And surely by now it would have passed even if by some freak chance such a storm blew in like a very lost bird.

But it does not pass, this abnormally foul weather. It's been rainy and blowsy, so that stepping outside is like a horizontal cold shower, for a week now without the slightest slackening of wind and wet. And still it storms.

Tag for the month is "storm". Post to the community with your character's response to the freak weather.

A few clarifications, since there have been some questions: Topics run from the first of the month to the first of the month. You can reply at any time within that window. Events, however, run from the fifteenth to the fifteenth. For example, the "monsters" topic opened on November the first, and will close on November the thirtieth. The "storm" event opens on November the fifteenth (this is the part where I ignore how much I fail at the calendar) and will not be closed until the fifteenth of December.

Also, please do remember to alter your tags to show who's threading in your posts!