Storm

This micro fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 17 drawing prompt Storm from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

“It’s gonna get us!” The little voice shouts as the cracking thunder dies down.

His uncle chuckles.

“It’s just noise, buddy. It can’t hurt you.”

“But what about the lights!!” At 3-years-old, he’s perfectly frantic with the notion that a thunderstorm has sentience and is coming after him.

“You mean the lightning?”

His eyes are as big and pale as teacup saucers when he nods. “Big lights. Really big lights.”

The uncle tries not to giggle. It’s not funny to his nephew. It’s a very serious situation. But he can’t help but be amused by the gravity of all this little boy’s three years.

“They can’t hurt you either, dude. Here, come see.”

He picks up the boy, carries him to the front door, and pushes open the screen. The sky is all shades of grey and bulging with the weight of the water inside, while the wind has picked up and rustles their hair and clothes. The little boy clings more tightly to his uncle as they stand and wait for a bolt of lightning.

Thirty seconds later, one illuminates the sky, streaking across the horizon like spider cracks in broken glass.

The boy shrieks and buries his head in his uncle’s neck.

“It’s alright, pal. See how far away that was? It can’t reach us. It’s waaaaay up in the sky.”

A lower, rumbling thunder follows in the lightning’s wake, not like the aggressive, crashing noise that set his nephew off in the first place. He peeks his head out from its hiding place.

“Sky sounds hungry.”

His uncle lets himself laugh at that one and his nephew starts smiling for the first time since the clouds rolled in earlier that afternoon. As if on cue, the little stomach pressed against him echoes the sky’s rumbling.

“Are you hungry like the sky?”

He nods and starts shouting, “Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream,” much more loudly than is necessary, but it makes his uncle laugh hard enough that he doesn’t really mind.

“Alright, buddy. Let’s have some ice cream and watch the rain on the back porch, whaddaya say?”

“Can we give the sky some ice cream, too?”

Another chuckle. “Not if I eat it all first.”

Another loud clap of thunder sounds, enough to make the uncle jump, but the little boy doesn’t seem to be scared anymore. He’s already scrambling out of his uncle’s arms and running toward the kitchen, the promise of ice cream having pushed all thoughts of the storm out of his head.