The Windy Day

Pierre-Augustine Renoir — Landscape Between Storms

A whistling in every ear, a howl between every home, a shaking of the earth, the wind was here! Everyone knew it was coming but no one knew it would come to town like this. Everything was calm then it suddenly started gusting. Nothing unusual, but the gusts redoubled their power each time. Rising and rising, like a concussion of cannon shots against every surface of the earth. No one had experienced a storm like this in fifty years. Shingles flew, branches snapped, dust lashed the face.

The wind grew stronger and stronger. No one had ever experienced a storm like this before. Roofs were knocked off whole, trees crashed to the ground, walls of dust swept the land! Shelter was becoming increasingly hard to find. Sturdy rock or brick walls were the only thing that could help but soon even those were being rolled around. Not a foot could stand steady and it wasn’t long at all before men tumbled along with the rest of the debris that once made up the town.

Everyone was blinded as the whole area was consumed by a grinding dust storm. Everything in the land was buried, rolled around, buried, and rolled some more. Howling, roaring, screaming the winds built stronger still. The sands became a grinder shredding everything, living and otherwise. Large objects were transformed into strips, small objects became powder, more dust for the all consuming devil.

The grind continued as everything no matter its size or substance was reduced to dust and joined with the hungry storm. It swept away the city, all the lands surrounding, the whole county! When it had finally moved on and the winds steadily dropped and the dust settled, the whole region had been sanded flat as a board and who could say that there was ever anything there at all to begin with?