Weathering
DESIRE FOGS THE MIND
February 2045 - San Francisco, The Elvish Protectorate
FROM THE DESK OF ELISE SASINI, FREELANCE JOURNALIST FOR THE SAN FRANCISCO LIGHT & INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A GOLDEN LAND: THE UNVARNISHED HISTORY OF SAN FRANCISCO’S ELVISH TAKEOVER:
Dear Ms. Sasini,
We are so excited about your proposal! You’re right — it is well past time someone tracked down the story behind all those social feed pics and urban legends. I can’t wait to see what you do with the story! If you need any resources from our research team, let me know. Good luck!
Best wishes,
Dorothy Fan
Non-Fiction Editor at West & Cape Publishing
Penguin Random House LLC
P.S. Say hi to your dad for me! He owes me a damn manuscript!!
Elise was an extremely lucky woman.
Only incredible good fortune could explain how she’d managed to secure the best view of San Francisco for nothing more than a signed copy of her father’s latest book and a tiny bump in her rent.
Normally, an apartment with a view like hers would be snatched up before she could slide her application into the building manager’s inbox, but through a series of unremarkable miracles, she’d learned that the previous tenant was moving out and that the landlord happened to be a huge fan of her father’s work.
Elise didn’t feel a lick of guilt over bribing her new landlord, either. In San Francisco, you did what you had to do to get a good apartment. She’d lived in the city her entire life, just as her father, Bob Sasini, had. She knew when to move and when to grease the wheels a little to get what she wanted.
Tucking her legs underneath her, Elise sighed with unrestrained pleasure at the sight of the glittering mass of urban life sprawled far below her. The bedroom window she gazed out of overlooked the entirety of downtown San Francisco and beyond, to the black stretch of dangerous water of the Bay and the glowing beacon of Solbourne Tower perched on Treasure Island.
There were only a handful of small apartment buildings scattered this high on the hills, so the streets below her were quiet and lined with scrubby greenery — the only kind that could survive the skin-stripping wind that raked through the area on a regular basis.
But the thing she loved most was the fog.
Sitting on the padded window seat by her bed, Elise held her breath as she watched a curtain of pillowy mist creep in from the Bay. Tonight, it held the shape of downy waves.
San Francisco was famous for its fog, but only locals understood that it was not just a veil of mist that blew in from the sea at a moment’s notice. It had wildly different shapes and moved unpredictably.
One day, it might roar in from the water in a single mass, a wall of wet white so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The next day, it could sweep in gently, unspooling around buildings and through streets like tendrils of smoke from a cold fire. It bounced in like a giant’s handful of cotton balls, carelessly tossed, or appeared as a wraith in the time between footsteps.
It was part of the spirit of San Francisco — changing constantly, never settling into dull routine. It was beautiful.
It was alive.
Elise’s pulse quickened. Everyone knew that the fog had a mind of its own, but no one had been able to catch more than a glimpse of the mysterious, ethereal being who lived in the heart of it.
Even her father couldn’t tell her what he looked like or what his name was. The elemental was as hard to catch and mercurial as the fog he was born in.
But Elise wasn’t a woman to back down from a challenge.
Born to one of the most legendary crime reporters in the UTA and a weather witch mother, she didn’t let her curiosity lie flat and lifeless. She followed the threads of her interests until there was nothing and no one left to question.
The fog had been her longest running obsession. Always simmering in the back of her mind, her fascination with the elemental who guarded the city looked for any excuse, any chance to find a foothold in her life.
Now, at long last, she had a reason to follow the fog.
* * *