Weather & Omens

• A clean, ordinary morning — Clear, mild, unremarkable — which is its own kind of ominous if the party has learned to distrust easy days.
• Birds going the wrong way — Every flock flies the direction the party came from, fast and low, none singing. They know something the road hasn't told you yet.
• A sky the color of a bruise — Yellow-green at the edges, heavy and still. Storm or worse; the air tastes like a held breath.
• Rain that falls warm — Blood-warm, faintly sweet, on a cold day. It does no harm. Nothing that drinks it acts quite right by evening.
• Two shadows at noon — For a few minutes everything casts a faint second shadow, offset, pointing somewhere the sun is not.
• Frost in the wrong season — A hard white rime on everything at dawn, gone by the time anyone fetches a second witness. It spelled a word on one window.
• The wind carries a voice — Just at the edge of hearing, in the gusts — a name, maybe, repeated. By dusk a party member is sure it's theirs.
• A red dawn, sailor's warning — The whole eastern sky the color of a coal. Old hands check their gear twice and say little.
• Mist that doesn't lift — Low and grey past midmorning, muffling sound; sounds that aren't the party's own come from inside it, patient and unhurried.
• A single black cloud — On an otherwise blue day, one cloud sits dead still over a fixed point on the horizon — over wherever the party is going.
• Heat with no sun — Overcast, windless, and sweltering anyway. Tempers fray. By afternoon someone says the thing they can't unsay.
• The smell of the sea, far inland — Salt and weed on the breeze, hundreds of miles from any coast. Gulls appear by noon, circling nothing.
• A halo around the moon — A wide cold ring, and within it the stars are wrong — one too many, brighter than the rest, that no one can name.
• Thunder with no lightning — Long, rolling, from a clear sky, felt in the chest before it's heard. The horses won't be calmed for an hour after.
• Pollen like gold dust — Drifting thick and shining on a still day, beautiful, settling on everything; it makes the throat itch and the dreams loud.
• A perfect, mirror-still day — Not a breath of wind, every puddle a flawless mirror — and the reflections lag, just slightly, behind what they show.
• Rain that falls upward at the edges — Mostly normal, but where it nears certain stones it slows, hesitates, and beads back toward the cloud.
• First snow, too early — Quiet, heavy, lovely, weeks ahead of any winter; it falls only within sight of the road and stops at the treeline like a held curtain.
• A wind that smells of woodsmoke — Strong and sudden, carrying the smell of a great fire, from a direction with nothing to burn — or nothing that's burned yet.
• The sun a hand's-width off — It rose where it always rises, but by midday it sits wrong in the sky, and the shadows agree, and no one wants to say so first.
• A drizzle that whispers — Fine rain on dry leaves, and in the patter, if you stop walking, something almost like words — always one phrase, just below sense.
• Crows on every fence post — One per post for a mile, evenly spaced, silent, all facing the same way: ahead, the way the party is walking.
• A green flash at sunset — A single brilliant green spark as the sun vanishes; old folk make a sign, and the night that follows is darker than the moon should allow.
• Dew that won't dry — Long past dawn the grass is still soaking, the air heavy and close; boots and spirits both grow waterlogged by noon.

Showing 24 of 45 in this pack. The full list ships in the complete bundle below.

More packs