And, I thought weather on Earth was weird...

Chapter Thirty Six: One Mean Cloud

The day started like most days did out here: bright, warm, and just on the edge of hot enough to sweat through your overalls if you stood still too long. We were knee-deep in sorting through the last of the harvested root vegetables—turnips, potatoes, and a few dozen rows of sweet red tubers we’d hoped would fetch a good price in the next town run. Quattro and Seis were shoulder to shoulder hauling crates while I scribbled inventory notes in a half-used notebook I found in the shed.

Lu came down from the stillhouse, her braid swinging behind her and a cloth ledger tucked under her arm. She was smiling like she’d just found twenty bucks in her coat pocket. “We just passed one hundred bottles of berry liquor,” she said, a little breathless. “That’s not counting what’s aging.”

I let out a whistle. “That’ll put a shine on Gus’ grin.”

“Or his liver,” she said with a smirk.

We both looked up when Uno came jogging down from the lookout perch, his cheeks pink and his eyes wide.

“There’s somethin’ weird comin’ from the north. Looks like a wall of dust. Big cloud. Real big.”

I wiped my hands on a rag and stood, already heading toward the ladder. “Stay put,” I told Lu, but she was already climbing up behind me.

Sure enough, there it was: a smudged line on the horizon, darker than the usual wisps of cloud that drifted lazily overhead. And it was movin’—not fast, but steady. It had shape, too. Not like rainclouds. Thicker. Heavier.

“Could be a pressure wall,” Lu said, shading her eyes. “You ever see one?”

“Not since my days in Amarillo. They roll in like a bus full of angry grannies. I’ll get the tractors under roof.”

We climbed down, and I barked out orders, but the boys didn’t need much coaxing. They scattered like trained farmhands, guiding equipment into barns, rolling tarps over drying grain, and double-checking the greenhouse locks.

Once everything was strapped, shuttered, and safe, we stood outside the big barn, just watching it come.

“That ain’t dust,” Dos muttered, voice uncertain. “It’s too wet-lookin’.”

He was right. There was no dry rustle to the air. It was still, too still. Then we felt it—a sudden whoosh of air like the island just exhaled. Not hot, not cold, just different. My ears popped.

“What do you think it is?” Lu asked.

“I think we’re about to find out,” I said.

And boy, did we. When it hit, the world went weird.

The cloud passed over us like a thin fog at first, dimming the ever-present sunshine to a weird, silver glow. The air prickled. It smelled sharp, not quite like ozone, but something close—like citrus left out in the sun.

The birds shut up. Not a chirp. Not even a flap of wings.

Then came the flashes. Not lightning—more like flickers of heat off the ground, darting and shimmering. One popped ten feet from Quattro, and he yelped, jumping back with a loud curse. The ground there sizzled like bacon grease.

“What the heck is this?” I hissed. Lu pulled the boys close to her skirts, even the older ones.

“I read about this,” she said. “Atmospheric density anomalies. Rare. Very rare. They form when terraforming systems try to recalibrate the air mix. Like when they’re... fine-tuning things.”

“Fine-tunin’ my backside,” I muttered, tossing a blanket over the still vent. “It’s zappin’ my land!”

The whole mess passed in under a half hour. Just a rolling wall of fog, flickers, and nervous glances. Then, just as quick as it’d come, it vanished. Poof. Sky back to normal. Birds singing again. Quattro cautiously kicked the spot that sizzled earlier, found it cooled off.

“Everything okay?” Seis asked, still crouched behind a planter like it might help.

I looked around. Nothing burned. No one fried. Fields intact. “Seems like it.”

Lu raised a hand. “But we should check the fermenters. Pressure changes like that can pop the seals.”

Turned out she was right. One of the honey pilsner barrels had developed a split at the bottom seam. We lost about two gallons.

“Coulda been worse,” Uno said, trying to mop it up with a dry sack.

“It will be worse,” I said, “if we don’t get better prep for these weird weather tantrums.”

Later that night, I was sitting out back on the porch, sipping what was left of a bottle that’d barely survived the barrel split. Lu came out with a second glass and sat beside me. Neither of us spoke for a minute.

“Gus says there’ve been more of these,” she said quietly. “Especially on the outer fringe planets. Terraforming cycles not quite done yet.”

I shook my head. “Ain’t like Earth, huh?”

“Nope,” she said. “But Earth don’t grow root beer trees and barley in six weeks, either.”

We clinked glasses and sipped. She rested her head on my shoulder just a little, and I didn’t move away.

“Think we’ll have more of those storms?” she asked.

“Sure as rain on a picnic,” I said. “But we’ll weather ‘em. We’ve got too much good hooch to let a cloud get in the way.”

She chuckled, and I felt her smile against my sleeve.

That night, the stars came out a little sharper than usual.

Chapter Thirty Seven: Running a Tight Still

By the time the weird sky business passed and things went back to normal, or whatever counted as normal on a sunlit island with ten catfolk and an old widower playin’ at farmhand, we were back to our regular chaos. The barley field was filling out nice, the tubers were stacked high in crates, and we had a little bit of every kind of booze settin’ to age. I’d never felt more productive in my life—not even during the big corn run back home the year we brought in thirty tons.

But I was tired, too. Real tired. And I wasn't the only one.

“Ron,” Lu said, hands on her hips, “you can’t keep doin’ this the way you been doin’. The boys are runnin’ themselves silly, and you ain’t got enough hands for what you’ve started.”

We were out at the halfway-done stillhouse—just the frame up and the ground leveled. Once and Doce, Lu’s other brothers, were hammerin’ away on a support beam while Uno and Dos were carefully sanitizin’ the mash tanks from last week’s berry run. Quattro was wrestling with the grain grinder, and Nueve and Dies were sorting bottle caps and labels.

“You already told me that once today,” I grumbled, wiping sweat from my brow. “You tryin’ to guilt me into somethin’?”

“I’m trying to get you to admit you need help,” she said, squinting at me like a schoolteacher with half her patience used up. “Permanent help. Not just my brothers comin’ and goin’. You need people to run these stills. Especially this new one.”

I crossed my arms and leaned against the barrel stack. “I thought your boys had this.”

“They do—for now. But once we’re movin’ barrels full-time, they’ll need help. Especially for fermentation checks, maintenance, even deliveries.”

She paused, eyein’ me real direct-like. “I’d like to hire Once and Doce. Maybe even let Seis take on a mentor role. He’s got a good nose for fermentation.”

I looked over at Once, who was setting the beam straight as a ruler, and then at Doce, who was lining up bolts without even marking the wood.

“They work,” I said. “Hard, too.”

“They’re proud,” she said. “But they’re willin’. And you’ve already seen what kind of loyalty they have.”

I gave it a minute of silence. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them—it was just a lot of change, fast. Happenin’ quicker than crops grow.

Finally, I said, “Let’s call it a trial run. I’ll pay ‘em fair, room and board, and a bonus if we clear what I’m expectin’ this quarter.”

She grinned. “You won’t regret it.”

“Hope not,” I said, then turned to yell toward the mash house. “Uno! Dos! You two still my brewmasters?”

“Till we’re dead!” Uno hollered.

“Or Lu fires us!” Dos added.

“Then that’s settled.”

We got the frame finished by dusk. Lu made a simple stew, and the brothers sat around the work site, sweaty and proud, crackin’ jokes in rapid-fire Spanish and offering each other spoonfuls from their shared bowls. I sat with my back against a post and sipped some leftover cider from the cracked barrel batch. It had gone flat but still had a good bite to it.

Once leaned toward me and said in broken English, “You make good things, boss. You dream big, yes?”

I nodded slowly. “I didn’t plan on it. But yeah, I guess I do.”

“You got good people,” he said. “We build anything for you.”

That hit a bit deeper than I wanted to admit. I tipped my cup to him.

After they all cleared out and the moonlight (or sun reflection—who knew anymore?) lit the yard, Lu and I stayed behind to close up.

“You did a good thing today,” she said, her voice softer than usual. “Letting go a little.”

“Hard to,” I admitted. “I built this life from scratch outta grief. Handin’ pieces over feels like givin’ away the last thing I got.”

She looked at me for a long moment. “Ron… grief’s not somethin’ you protect. It’s somethin’ you carry. But you don’t gotta carry it alone.”

I didn’t say anything. Just put my hand over hers on the barrel and squeezed.

The stillhouse would be done in a few days, and then we’d be running full tilt. Twice the output, maybe more. Twice the risk, too—but I was startin’ to think it’d be worth it.

Especially with Lu by my side, and her boys laughin’ in the distance.