Here Comes the Storm

The light changes first. Bright one minute, bruised the next.

Behind the trees the clouds are stacking up, heavy and dark, the colour of slate. You can feel it on your skin before anything happens. The air goes thick and still. The heat presses down.

Then the wind arrives. The grass bends all at once, a silver wave running across the plain. A single tree stands out in front of it all, the last thing lit before the storm.

The wildebeest do not care. They keep their heads down and graze, right under those black clouds, as if storms are just another kind of weather. Which, out here, they are.

You smell rain before you see it. Wet dust. That sharp, clean smell that makes everyone breathe in at once.

Thunder rolls somewhere far off. Not loud. Deep. You feel it in the seat.

The driver looks at the sky. You look at the sky. The cameras come out fast, because light like this does not last.

Then the first fat drops hit the dust.

In a city, a storm is something that ruins your day.

Out here, it is the show.