You Must Kiss a Whale

You Must Kiss a Whale
by
David Skinner

Now, the storm cannot think at all. It never even changes, mindlessly, like normal weather. After my father vanished, my mother became obsessed with the storm, for there was something that would not be capricious, would not change to spite her, would not ever make her surrender. The storm she could predict with absolute certainty.
But soon she discovered she could not define the storm or map it any better than had the makers of the almanac. Although her predictions were good, there was really no point to her work, and she became very discouraged.

Until, that is, she decided to fight the storm. And how do you fight a storm? By not allowing it to ruin your day. By not allowing it to keep you trapped inside the house. My mother has set out to make a raincoat that even the great and violent perpetual storm cannot defeat.
And that is her secret work: She is out in her tent, making the Ultimate Raincoat. It’s a secret because she won’t tell me. She says if I know, it will jinx the project. She’s tried eight times already, and each of those eight times I knew what sort of raincoat she was making and how it was progressing, and each of those eight times the storm ignored her newest raincoat and knocked her down and nearly drowned her. So Mother concluded that I was a jinx, and now tells me nothing at all.

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