The Yellow Sky

The sky was broken.

My first thought, on seeing its sickly yellow flat pallor, was that it was some end-of-the-world, alien-invasion, doom-foreboding omen. I dismissed this, rationally; then, to confirm, I went outside. To the west, the sky seemed normal; a sunset, red and pink, not spectacular but not unusual. But elsewhere - elsewhere! Some sort of clouds seemed to fill the sky - not fluffy, not white, but yellow and flat and ugly. Soot, perhaps, something from the fires to the south (I thought, later) - they refracted the light, turned it yellow and deadly, turning our backyard, the street, everything this terrible yellow. I told my brother - with difficulty weaning his attention away from the game, he exclaimed in alarm at seeing the sky, suggesting I photograph it. I did - but the camera adjusted, and showed nothing amiss. (Extraordinary! - to manufacture something unable to capture the bizarre! Unless you tweak the settings, I suppose.)

So I write of it here, to say what I will soon forget. (Unless it persists, in which case we will all have greater worries.)