Final Solstice
be from the dragonflies.
    Solomon smiled as he surveyed the mountains rising as if birthed from the treetops. “Carefully.” He took a seat, settling into the carved oak chair. “Reverently.”
    “So let’s get to it. Why am I here?” Mason shifted, feeling a little in awe, like standing before a great king, saint or wizard. “Why the attention, the drama, the cloak and dagger? The nearly giving my wife and I dual heart attacks, and me a concussion, only to come back and grant us the best gift of our lives?”
    Ignoring the question, Solomon blinked and raised his head to the rising sun. “Let me ask you something, Mason. Looking out at the sky right now, watching the trees, feeling the wind, what would you, in your meteorological capacity, predict to be the forecast for the day?”
    “What?”
    “Just humor me.”
    “I’m off the clock.”
    “Just give it your best shot. Out here, without your computers and satellite links, without the weather maps and almanacs, what would you predict for the next few hours?”
    Mason sighed heavily. “Okay, it’s going to be mostly sunny, seventy-six to seventy-nine by mid-day, with a clear starlit night, temps dropping into the low sixties.”
    “Chance of rain?”
    “None.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, zero chance.”
    Solomon turned slightly, and his eyes sparkled when they met Mason’s. “There’s an umbrella behind your chair. I suggest you get it ready.”
    “For what?” Mason started to ask, when he saw Solomon get up and walk back into the circle. Once inside, ringed by the great eroded stones, he turned and spread his arms wide, with his palms up. His suit coat rippled and his ponytail whipped in a sudden easterly wind.
    “I prefer to feel the weather first-hand Mason. Can I call you Mace?”
    Mason was about to object. How did he even think of that nickname? Pamela was the only one.…
    Solomon continued. “To become one with the weather, experiencing all its power and ferocity, tenderness and mercy …”
    Mason again looked to the sky, but now with less confidence. The wind had indeed risen, gusting suddenly; ten miles per hour, now twenty. The pressure plummeted. He turned, and over the mountains, as if on cue, came a spreading darkness, a wave of clouds unrolling like a massive black carpet.
    “Impossible.”
    Solomon was laughing like a young boy. Now he was unbuttoning his shirt. He peeled off his jacket and then spun in circles, eyes closed against the wind. Suddenly the rooftop was enclosed in shade, the tumbling clouds massing directly overhead, plunging the valleys and the mountains and the forests into a gloom as dark as a winter’s twilight.
    “I don’t believe this.” Mason said, only to have his words eradicated by a deafening peal of thunder as an ensuing flash of light heralded the release of the sky’s floodgates.
    And the rain poured down.
    It fell in sheets, instantly soaking Mason, drenching him from head to toe, nearly blinding him in the violence shrieking from the sky. Solomon shouted in joy, his arms high, still spinning, mouth open, catching the rain as it blasted down upon him. Lightning crackled above and behind him, but from Mason’s angle it looked as if spider web flashes arced from Solomon’s very fingertips and erupted from his mouth and his eyes.
    Then his head whipped around and his gaze locked on Mason’s.
    Time seemed to grind to a halt and the rain fell in slow-motion, each drop pounding onto Solomon’s bare chest and shoulders, splattering into earthen craters at his feet, the droplets exploding into the rising puddles.
    Finally, after what seemed like ages had passed and the land was swept clean, the rain slowed, the lightning fizzled and the world caught up and time accelerated in a hurry.
    The clouds rolled on their way, rumbling morosely, exhausted but still irate and grumbling as they dissipated out over the mountains, heading toward the ocean.
    “Impossible,” Mason whispered again. He wiped at his face,

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