Before the Storm Season

Every year before the storms came, the island changed. The people who knew it could feel the change before the weather did.

It was not a dramatic change. It was subtle — a shift in the quality of the air, a particular stillness in the afternoons, the way the light fell differently on the water. The birds knew it first. Then the old fishermen. Then, eventually, everyone.

Petra had grown up on the island and she knew the signs as well as anyone. She could feel the season turning in her body, a low-level alertness that was not quite anxiety and not quite excitement but something between the two. A readiness.

She was forty-one now and she had lived through thirty-seven storm seasons on this island. She had seen the bad ones — the ones that took roofs and boats and, twice, people. She had seen the mild ones that came and went like a rumor. She had learned that you could not predict which kind you were getting until it arrived.

What you could do was prepare. This was the island's philosophy, its deepest wisdom: you cannot stop the storm, but you can be ready for it.

She spent the week before the season doing what she always did. She checked the shutters and the roof and the generator. She stocked the pantry. She brought the porch furniture inside. She walked the perimeter of her property and noted what was loose, what was vulnerable, what needed attention.

Her neighbor, who had moved to the island three years ago from the mainland, watched her with a mixture of admiration and anxiety. "Aren't you scared?" he asked.

"Of what?" Petra said.

"The storms."

She considered this. "I respect them," she said finally. "That's different from scared."

He did not look convinced. She did not try to convince him further. Some things you could only learn by living through them.

The first storm of the season arrived on a Thursday, smaller than expected, gone by morning. She stood on her porch afterward and watched the water settle and the birds return and the light come back, clean and new, the way it always did after a storm.

She was ready. She was always ready.

That was the thing about living somewhere difficult: it taught you what you were made of.