Earl

[Jeremy Hight]

Earl beat himself against the shore the way waves beat themselves to froth.  Earl  beat himself against the coastal hills the way of errant fog and those last sad errant orphaned clouds after a storm has moved on.  Earl chased her through villages, past open markets,  through old streets;  she was so close it had once seemed.   

Earl  bled warm across a conversation about wifi and ghosts,  he  broke part of himself when the mountains seem to rise to betray his path.   

Earl died somewhere in those mountains, alone yet seen by crowds.   His body seemed to split with one drifting toward the ocean in ruin and the core of him vanishing on the spire of a mountain.  

Earl was a hurricane  and Dena had been a tropical storm near him as he formed.  

[Jeremy Hight]

Earl felt his body thin and high ride slowly to the ocean past towns and roads.   He for a few hours felt his lower body bleed out water to no one on a mountain spire.

Earl reached the coast and then....

[Jeremy Hight]

Earl slipped clean the bonds of body and the syllables of his name.   He faintly saw waves beat against shore,  a boy make a sand castle with a red pail,  a woman hug her grandchildren by a broken tree,  a wave curl and die into froth, it was all so impossible as he was but high cloud and one lone rain shower above.  

Earl  felt himself drop a short burst of rain on the shore below, the droplets forming odd circles then chaos on the waves so oddly like glass , like the windows below when he once was so young and strong on the opposite shore.   

Earl lost sentience as he passed over the boy who saw a dissipating cloud and a few drops of rain.  

The weather forecasters would never speak of Earl again,. the storm that did not rage as catastrophe or oddity, simply rain, wind and body of steam.

3 days later the last remaining swirl would actually form a new storm but with a new name, still nothing of Earl but his absence and impetus and ocean rains. 

[markcmarino]

A bottle of scotch hanging from his hand, Markino walked over to Jeremy where he sat on a great rocking chair, having spilled out his tale of Earl upon the group.

To earl! Rob shook his head, dissipated. What a system! 

Let us pour one out, said Markino, for this dear, sad storm.

No, let us rain one out! said Thor.  Then with a roar, the norse God threw the bottle into the air and smashed it with his hammer.

Andrew looked up in distress. Hey, that was my 1885 Glengoolie Blue.

[Jeremy Hight]

Earllllllll      we shout ...

nooooooo       Andrew shouts...