Las Vegas
loomed below the clouds, the Luxor Pyramid’s light did nothing but define the
thick, black masses that drizzled rain. But it wouldn’t stay a drizzle. The
various weather stations predicted a thunderstorm, but not until much later.
However, they hadn’t reckoned with me and the other storm riders.
I sat
perched on a shelf I had carved out of the cloud. I had gotten away early, but
could feel in the air that the energy was coming. After over a year of being a
storm rider, I had thought my senses would have stopped changing, but there
were continuous variations, like growth spurts. One such change told me that the west wind carried more than just
the clouds.
Then, at
the edge of my vision and sense, I felt/saw the flashes. A dozen bolts of lightning
arced across the sky from southern Utah. The bolts didn’t travel the hundreds
of miles to me, but they did catapult the riders through the air at several
times the speed of sound.
Natalie
coasted in first, skating into my cloud shelf to park her hip next to mine.
“Hey,
sailor. Come here often?”
“Not often
enough,” I grinned. “Nice dress.”
“You think?”
She plucked at the hem of the tight, filmy dress that revealed lacy underwear
underneath.
“Absolutely.
It does interesting things when soaked from the clouds, too.”
“It does,
doesn’t it? We’re going to have so much fun clubbing.”
“Are we
going to avoid getting arrested?”
“Woooo!” a
new voice yelled as he surfed to a landing just ahead of the others in the
group.”
“Probably
not,” Natalie rolled her eyes. “Jack’s here.”