Wind

The wind is howling outside. Howling.

There are moments of irony in the landscape of this place. Sometimes, the sound of wind bending insistently through branches and rattling leaves like heavy ornaments is exactly like the push and hiss of waves over a beach. There are no beaches for those waves that could crash and slide, none any larger than a modest riverbank and shallow stones, and the air is dry with grass and the smell of foothills, but it sounds like waves.

Not tonight. It's howling like an argument, and every now and then the house will creak; the annoyed twitch of something unmovable and sleeping in the midst of elemental puppies. A house on wheels, on a trailer on the highway, on its way to settling, ended up settling in a ditch last night, blown tumbling in time with the tumbleweeds that clog and layer the barbed-wire fences on the windward side, lopsiding them.

It's not cold, not yet, and not even constantly loud. It just rumbles, all the air a cranky, sleeping monster in the middle of a dream.

I'll sleep well.