Information

Hesper
Legacy Name: Hesper

The

Glacier Lain
Owner:

Metaphor

Age: 13 years, 4 weeks

Born: April 6th, 2011

Adopted: 13 years, 4 weeks ago

Adopted: April 6th, 2011

Statistics

Level: 9
Strength: 10
Defense: 10
Speed: 10
Health: 10
HP: 10/10
Intelligence: 0
Books Read: 0
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Unemployed

On the morning Hurricane Hesper was born, Venus was supposed to be visible to the naked eye. Just a month earlier, the almanac halted its lunar cycle to boast of Venus. Instead of the usual illustrations of parading gibbouses and crescents, a single watercolor planet, elephantine and resolute in its ceremony, lurched across the sun unprecedented by lesser phasing clones. Even the local news's meteorologist, between his scripted prodding and poking at the daily forecasts, talked up the arriving planet, told everyone to see, must see, but watch your eyes please. Even the backyard astronomers put their telescopes to rest and headed for the rooftops with an inexhaustible supply of cheap beer and glow sticks. Even the teachers told their students no homework, just tell me what you see, in your own words, please.

When Hurricane Hesper was born, nobody knew what to name it. The experts refused to give it the name that was to be given to the next natural disaster to arrive on shore, which would have been Hurricane Hades. They argued that this storm was created, not formed.

Hurricane Hesper was not to be a natural disaster, really. Meteorologists predicted its arrival to be tame: a veil of mist around every skyscraper, a crawl to the traffic, a brief struggle of windshield wipers, but all in good fun. It wouldn't tear down any phone wires, only chase the pigeons and crows into nearby treetops and bushes. Newsstands would remain intact, just a few papers' headlines warped into blurs of breaking news.

The following day, there were no comic strips, no sale ads, no sports updates, no sky watches, no weather report, no obituary. There was no rubble either. The morning paper said, Venus is dead.

----

After Hurricane Hesper hit--a verb that took some time for the town to accept as most accurate--everybody became more aware of his sense of sight. Eyes of telescopes went dark. By dusk, stars gathered like weepy cataracts. And the moon--nobody wanted to see the moon this way: hazy in the early morning frost, meager even in fuller phases, like yellowed bone exposed and osteoporotic. Everybody became more aware of his own body. The astronomers identified new aches in their joints (in between muscles, the dark spots on x-rays, as one elder put it). Children whined of rashes shaped like warm craters on their bellies, which their mothers nursed dutifully with baking soda baths and gentle fragrant creams. They kept their children home from school and fetched the doctor who said not to fear, might be stress or the symptoms of growth.

The aftermath of the storm was an entirely separate matter. Nobody wanted to confront it. It wasn't that the destruction was particularly grave. Hurricane Hesper, for the most part, kept its promise of peace on ground. The atmosphere, however, reeked of rain for weeks. It permeated clothing and skin. When residents traveled to communities just several towns over, the people picked up the scent immediately and commented, not quite with disdain but with a dismayed curiosity, "You must be one of the storm people." Around the time of the first full moon after the storm, people began to play with pronouns.

Credits:

Profile by ~~Yukimiko~~