There was a storm on the horizon. 

That in itself wasn’t unusual. This far north, this close to the sea, storms hit about once a week. There was some scientific reason for it, no doubt, something about ocean currents and wind patterns. Things Marcos didn’t care enough about to understand. 

What Marcos understood was his job. He was a guard. He took the second night shift, from midnight until four in the morning, six days a week. He stood on top of the cold tower, watching the horizon for ships. Granted, some nights the rain and snow were so thick he could barely see to the end of his nose, but him standing there was a matter of principle more than anything. 

But this storm… It worried him. He hadn’t been staring at the horizon for the past twenty-eight years to not know what storms typically looked like. 

Typically storms came with giant clouds. In the darkness of night they usually first appeared as a ghostly grey color, only turning black when they got close enough to block out the sky. Rain storms would come with lightning, flashes of electricity going from one point in the clouds to another, never touching the water. Snow storms tended to look like they carried weight in them, the wind swirling beneath them making them look like a snail with centipede legs. No matter what type of storm, though, it always moved. 

This one hadn’t. It had been sitting on the horizon in the same place for the past two days. It looked black, despite the distance. It looked heavy, but Marcos swore he could see flashes of dark blue lightning in its depths. 

He leaned on a crenellation, watching the storm. 

“What are you?” he asked aloud. He often talked to storms; there weren’t many other things for him to talk to. 

The clouds stopped rolling. The mass as a whole seemed to turn, to focus on him. 

“Do you really want to know?”

The voice seemed to come from the wind, a soft, distant echoing sound. It was the sort of sound someone could pass off as being their imagination.

Marcos hesitated. He’d fancied that storms had spoken to him before, through a well-timed thunderclap or a sudden turn in the direction of the wind. But he’d never heard words. 

“I don’t know,” Marcos finally decided. “If you’re something very dangerous I think I’d rather not. And I suspect you’re very dangerous.”

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The sound of distant thunder reached his ears, sounding like laughter. “Exceedingly dangerous, yes. Aren’t you curious?”

“A bit, but I’m a guard. Curiosity is discouraged in guards,” he told the storm. 

“Your scientists and mages have been working tirelessly to figure out what I am,” the storm told him. “And yet you’re the first to try speaking to me. Why is that?”

Marcos shrugged. “I suppose they don’t expect you to answer. Storms typically don’t, you see.”

“Why did you speak to me, then?”

“I talk to all the storms.”

“Oh? What do you say to them?”

“Usually it starts out as ‘please don’t come this way’, then if they keep heading north it’s a ‘thank you kindly’, or if they come straight at me it tends to be more in the line of ‘could you hold off until my shift is over’, and if they don’t I spend an hour telling them they’re very rude. It gives me something to do.”

The rumbling laughter came again. “Would you like me to continue north?”

Marcos thought about it. “This is the most interesting conversation I’ve had in all my years as a guard, but I think, on the basis that you’re a storm, that I would prefer it if you continued on your way without coming any closer to me.”

“How eloquently put,” the storm purred. “You wish me to know that you have nothing against me specifically, but want me to leave simply because I’m a storm.”

“I’m the same with cats,” Marcos said thoughtfully. “They have their place, their purpose, but I don’t like them to get too close to me. Cats and spiders.”

“Do you speak to cats and spiders the same way you speak to storms?”

“Yes.”

There was a low rumble, a hum like the storm was thinking something over. “Would you prefer it if I were a cat?”

“It’s all the same to me, but I suspect the scientists and mages would prefer a strange cat hanging about to a strange storm hanging about.”

“Very well.”

Marcos wasn’t quite sure what happened next. The storm shot towards the city at an impossible speed, blocking out the sky. Then there was a flash of navy blue lightning, a thunderclap that could be heard miles away, and suddenly the storm was gone. 

A black cat with navy eyes watched Marcos from the top of the crenellation. 

“Is this acceptable?” it asked.

“Yes,” Marcos said, feeling it was the only answer that wouldn’t end in death. 

The cat purred, stretching. “It has been ages since I last had a physical body. For some reason I feel like I would enjoy eating a fish…”

“I’ll get you one when my shift ends,” Marcos promised. 

“Thank you. Do you want to know what I am yet?”

“Nope,” Marcos answered immediately. “Absolutely not. Not in the slightest.”

The cat gave a purring laugh. “Very well, Marcos, I will keep that to myself.”

“I don’t want to know how you know my name, either.”

The cat jumped down and rubbed against his shins. “We’re going to be great friends.”