Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

ZEPHYR

ONE MONTH LATER

“Zeph?” Storm’s voice brings me back from a very odd tornado in Texas. It’s much farther south than it should be, and I’ve been gently nudging it northward, where people are more prepared for it.

I turn so I can see him. He’s crossing the flat part of the roof toward me, and the breeze dances around him as always. Since the time he slipped and almost fell, but I caught him—from fifteen feet away—he’s been a lot more confident walking around up here. He knows I’d never let him get hurt.

“Hello. Isn’t it a beautiful day?” I hold out an arm to him, and he slips under it and presses against my side. I never thought I could feel this content while corporeal. As much as I love being on this planet, being able to touch and smell and see with the senses of a living creature, I only get to be here when there’s a battle to fight. But now, even knowing we still have so much work to do, I also get to have a little slice of happiness for myself.

“Gorgeous,” he agrees. “I’m sorry to interrupt; I know you’re busy, but?—”

“I’m never too busy for you.”

Storm smiles and presses a kiss to my cheek. “You’re the sweetest thing. You’ll probably change your mind when you hear what I have to say, though.”

I wince. “Did I accidentally mess up your papers again?” I’d only meant to send him a cooling breeze, but he was getting some files organized, and I might have been a little enthusiastic.

“No,” he assures me. “My papers are fine. I was looking through all the videos Cody did, and I noticed there aren’t as many with you. Why is that? I would have thought the weather is something that would get a lot of clicks, since so many people are concerned about climate change.”

Oh. I try not to look guilty. “Cody tried,” I admit. “I tried too. But I kept getting distracted when he was videoing.”

Awareness brightens his expression. “Ahhh.”

“Yeah. He said we could just keep going and he’d edit it, but sometimes we’d be here for hours and he couldn’t even piece together a two-minute video. So we gave up.”

“That makes sense. Well, things are different now. You don’t get distracted as much when I’m here, and definitely not when I’m talking to you.”

“Only for emergencies,” I agree.

“So it’s settled. We’ll do a couple hours of filming, and I’ll put together some videos for the YouTube channel and other socials.”

“Okay.” Whatever he wants. “What do I need to talk about?”

“Your favorite subject.”

I frown. “You?”

His laugh is beautiful. “No, honey. The air. Don’t worry, I’ve got a list of talking points I think will interest people. We might also start doing some short lives when there’s a notable weather event around the world. Come and find me when you’re finished with your tornado.” He kisses my cheek again and then steps away. My side is instantly lonely without him pressed to it, and I want to ask him to stay.

He won’t though. He’s very strict about getting work done.

It’s another hour before the tornado is in the right place, and thirty minutes after that before I’m convinced it can be left without intense supervision. Then I go down to the office in search of Storm.

He’s typing industriously when I walk in, that little crease between his brows telling me he’s concentrating hard, and pauses just long enough to hold up a finger asking me to let him finish. I recognize the screen as being the back end of our website—I’ve watched him working enough times to know that now—so he’s probably posting an update. That’s okay—I don’t mind waiting. Just being around him is better than anything else.

While he’s finishing up, I sit in the extra chair by the wall and check in on all the news. Meeting Storm has had a lot of benefits—my element has trained itself to process information better. I can prioritize the input so that I’m not ever getting bombarded anymore. The emergency news comes directly to my attention, anytime, anyplace. Important but not urgent information only pops up when I’m between tasks, and gossip is on-demand. The best part is that the air is learning what kind of gossip I like and what can be left unheard. Storm says I’m teaching it to behave like an algorithm, which I don’t fully understand. As long as it’s working, that’s all that matters.

“Done!” He pushes back from the desk and swivels to face me. “Sorry to make you wait.”

I smile at him. “I would wait forever for you.”

His beautiful face goes soft. “You gotta stop saying that stuff while I’m working, Zeph. But you’re getting epically laid tonight.”

“You too. Hey, do you want to hear an update on Ted and Brenda?”

He lights up. “Yes! I’m dying to. The last I heard was when they took his mom out to dinner at that restaurant and Ted’s ex-girlfriend came over to tell him he left some of his stuff at her place.”

His mom’s meltdown when she heard that was something I’ll never forget. After a rant that got the attention of all the other diners, she stormed out of the restaurant and didn’t speak for the rest of the night. “Well, Brenda wanted to tell her the truth then, but Ted begged her not to—said his mom would forgive an affair since they were staying together. Brenda didn’t want his mom to think she’d ever take her husband back after an affair, so they compromised and ended up telling her that they’d gone through a rough patch, separated for a few months, then reconciled and were now better than ever.”

Storm’s jaw drops. “ Why? They had the out right there! How old is Ted’s mom, and do they really think they can fake being married to each other for the rest of her life?”

I shrug. “That’s the best part—she was supposed to go back to Spain next week, but she’s just told them that she’s decided to move here. Apparently, this visit was to test out whether she wanted to live in the US again, and she does. She said, and this is a quote, ‘I want to be near my beloved son and daughter-in-law, and hopefully many grandbabies.’”

The choking sound Storm makes worries me, but then he bursts into laughter. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard! They are so screwed.”

“Yep. That happened today. They haven’t had a chance to talk in private yet.”

“That’s going to be one hell of a conversation! Oh, oh—Brenda’s sister is going to be so smug! She told her not to do this.” He shakes his head. “Make sure you tell the others this later. Cody and Bran have a bet going about whether Ted and Brenda will actually end up back together by the end of all this.”

“They told me. Cody wanted to know if I had any inside information.”

Rolling his eyes, Storm turns back to the desk and grabs his tablet. “He would. Okay. Enough fun. Time for us to do some work. I’ve made a list of things we can do some videos about. For today, I thought we’d start off easy and just do two.”

I look at the list on the screen. I could talk about all those things for hours, especially if Storm is the one asking me questions. “Which ones did you want to do today?”

He taps the top of the list. “What are storms, and then, this isn’t on the list, but since there’s going to be a lot of attention on the freak Texas tornado, what if we do a short video about that? Why it happened and why it’s bad, in very basic terms.”

My face must show what I’m thinking, because he laughs. “I know it’s complicated and not basic at all. But if you had to explain it to an older child or teenager, or anyone who doesn’t have any knowledge about weather patterns, that’s what we want to put online. We’re trying to educate people who are looking for answers but can’t or don’t want to parse through the technical terminology.”

“I guess I can do that. You might have to stop me if I start getting too off-track,” I warn.

“Don’t worry, I will. Come on.”

He takes me over to the filming area he and Cody set up. There’s a green screen that I’m supposed to stand in front of, with some big lights and a camera pointing at it.

“I just stand there and talk?” This is a bit different from when Cody was trying to do this with me. He would find me wherever I was and point his phone at me.

“Stand on the piece of tape.” Storm points to the taped X on the floor. “Then wait while I set things up.”

It’s interesting to watch him fiddle with the lights, look at the camera screen, then fiddle some more and mutter to himself. I love his intensity for the things he cares about, and the fact that the things he’s most intense about involve me.

“This damn—ugh!”

“What’s the matter?”

“I only want this light to move, like, a millimeter , but it keeps going— Oh. Thank you.” He shoots me a grateful look as I send a probe of air to adjust the light.

“Is that how you want it?”

“Yeah, that’s perfect. You’re the best. I should have just asked for help, huh?” He steps back from the light with a rueful shake of the head.

“That’s why we found each other, right? To work together?”

He taps a button, and the lights blaze to life, making me squint as my human eyes adjust. “Stop saying shit that makes me want to jump you. We’re working. Okay, now I’m going to start filming, and you’re going to talk to me.”

“About tornadoes?”

“Not yet. Have you had lunch yet?” His attention is mostly on the camera screen.

“Yeah, Aether brought me a sandwich. Ham and cheese,” I add, since he wants me to talk. “What I really wanted was sponge cake. Have you ever had really good sponge cake? The kind that’s so airy, it feels like it dissolves in your mouth? I like it without any fillings or toppings.”

“In other words, you like it because it’s got a lot of air in it,” he says dryly, and I shrug.

“Aqua makes us eat soup a lot, but we don’t eat sponge cake and souffle anywhere near enough.”

“Do you get along with your colleagues?”

“We’re brothers,” I reply simply. I know what he’s doing now—trying to get soundbites he can edit into the video, or a video at some point. “Sometimes it seems like we’re opposites, but it’s the simple truth that everything exists in balance. That balance isn’t always perfectly equal, like people think, but as long as the balance is maintained, the status quo continues. Seventy percent of the planet’s surface is water, not land, but that’s from a human perspective. We can’t breathe or live beneath the surface of water, so we discount the fact that the floor of the oceans are still rock, in the simplest terms. And below that is the core, which is basically molten metal. The air and water and other influences from above balance with the heat and movement in the center, and we all go on about our day.”

“And air is in everything, right? Even if it’s not breathable for humans.”

“Exactly,” I agree. “Almost everything, anyway. Everything works together, in balance.”

“So even though air and water might seem like they’re opposites, they’re connected?”

“There’s plenty of air in water.” I smile. “Humans just don’t have the right filtering system for it. There’s a lot of water in air too. We just call it humidity.”

“Why is it more humid when it’s hot, or in places that have hotter temperatures?”

“That’s a fun fact—cold air doesn’t retain moisture as well as warm air. So if you live in a more temperate climate, it’s more likely that you’ll have higher humidity.”

“Does that mean there’s no humidity in places like the Arctic?”

“Not exactly. There needs to be a certain amount of humidity in the air for snow to be able to form. But there is a place in Antarctica, for example, where it’s both so cold and has so little humidity that there’s no ice.”

Storm looks up from the camera. “Really? No ice? In Antarctica ?”

I nod. “Really. Air and water have to have the right balance for snow and ice to occur, and in the Dry Valleys, that balance isn’t there. There could be a blizzard just a few miles away, but not there.”

“Wow. Water and air are what people think of when it comes to weather—wind, rain, and humidity. What about bigger weather events? What’s a storm, exactly?”

I take a second to collect my thoughts. He wanted me to keep this relatively simple.

“There are a lot of things that make a storm, but…”