Fortissimo

downbeat

Not to be edgy, but I am really a fan of thunderstorms.

And not in like a... what's it called? "Dark academia?" type of way either. It's not the aesthetic, really, although it did pair well with the cold Earl Grey tea I had somehow made last all the way from Daisy to Pearl Island and the soft sweatshirt still nestled around my shoulders. I'm never going to be brooding in a window seat under a blanket I knitted myself with a musky candle nearby and a book "no one has ever heard of," and you shouldn't be sitting close to a window either if it's storming. There's just something comforting about gentle beach thunder, and raindrops on the sand, and spectacular displays of lightning over the ocean. Especially when you're cozy inside, safe but still, somehow, part of the storm.

One of my friends was taking a literature class last semester, and every time it stormed she would talk about how storms always foreshadowed something bad in books, or at least created an uncomfortable atmosphere. But life isn't literature (fortunately) and I don't think a storm has to be bad. Watching the waves climb higher and higher as they roll just past the shore makes you appreciate the dry house. And listening to the rain pound the roof makes you remember it's there, keeping you warm and safe. It's more beautiful than bad luck. A soft start to the summer.

The longest-serving mezzo soprano section leader of the chamber choir is named Stormie, coincidentally, and I would describe her with that word exactly. She can be kind of off-putting at first, like that first lightning strike that makes you have to get out of the pool, but not in a bad way. She's talented, and intense- pronouncing the Latin messily would not fly in her section. At the same time, she's steady, and comforting, like a night storm with persistent rain and the occasional rumble of gentle thunder. Like any storm, she isn't without enemies- namely Serafina Hernandez, the latest arrival to the house, whose voice I could hear over the entire storm as I wandered around the house, looking for a room that would be out of the way.

If Stormie was a rainy summer midday, Serafina was a blazing hot afternoon. She was loud, and brash, and always had a well-timed crack holstered like a conceal carry weapon. Her main hobbies included singing, vandalism, smoking marijuana, and hating Stormie. I guess they had been pitted against each other for years in the mezzo circles, and truth be told I had been afraid of both of them at one time for different reasons. They were both good and both deserved credit, but Stormie got most of it because Rosenbush was never the biggest fan of Serafina's attitude. And that was enough to create the... here it comes... perfect storm.

I hadn't heard if Stormie was going to come or not, but from the mood Serafina seemed to be in two floors below, it was probably better that she didn't. It was too early in the summer for a fight.

I had wandered to the very top of the house before Serafina's voice became muffled, and suddenly I found myself in front of the door to what I assumed was the widow's walk. It was almost unnerving at first, knowing how high up I had to be, but then I spotted the perfect little bedroom right off the hallway. The door was so unassuming that at first I had thought it was a linen closet, but when I creaked it open there was, in fact, a room back there.

It was tiny, and there was only one bed, so if I claimed this room now, as I had been the first to get to it, then I could have it and not have to worry about any uncomfy roommate situations. It was definitely not the cutest room in the house, but it was the most private, and the most out of the way, and the least likely to be fought over by someone else. The lowest impact option.

As for the room, it was a room. There was a big bed with fluffy pillows and a cream-colored duvet, and various thrift-store-looking beach decorations on the white panel walls. A tiny bedside table housed a glass lamp filled with seashells Aunt Hilary had no doubt collected from the beach and another, matching one held a dusty landline phone. Think... Coastal Grandmother. But in the nineties. It was just enough.