Forecast Cryptologists / Meteorological Prophets

 

There were secret lives like secret passageways, invisible annexes and corridors encoded in the language of rain and makeshift rafts, under lock and key of dream.

 

Skeleton keys for skeleton doors.

 

Lucy’s great aunt once confessed the burden of a black family heirloom, before the conflagration consumed her along with her livelihood. (Rumor has it it was the work of a jealous lover who was never found.) It skips a generation and manifests different for every Vetiver woman, she explained in the back of her shop late one night – candles lit low, closed sign clacking at the door – and so my child you will surely inherit the curse. Be wary of what triggers it, but do not be afraid. Do not ever be afraid, child.       Lucy had been skeptical until the night of her 16^th birthday. Came the rain. Came the thunder. Came the curse. Her trigger, it seemed, was weather-related. Whenever it would turn she would feel it again: a series of unrequited lives flashing, galloping across a canvas of acute reverie, vivid with textures never-touched and never-before captured colors. Whether the glyphs-in-motion belonged to actual people somewhere out there or merely figments of her own imaginary fiction she would often question. In either case, they were real, as real as those toothy memories of love which cling obstinately to the heart’s fabric like cockleburs, no matter how many times you reach your hand in to rake them away.

 

One last thing, her aunt had spoken before snuffing out the last candle: If ever you meet one of them and their fate be ill, you must banish them from your life forever, child. For what you see is only one possible version of their future, but your presence will surely solidify their doom.