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Title: Thunder Storms
Author: River (river_ofek@yahoo.com)
Disclaimer: The X-Men mentioned in this story 
are the property of Marvel and are used without permission. 
No profit is made from this.
Notes: This story has a similar view of Ororo Munroe as the one 
found in "Small Cages," and I would be ecstatic if more 
writers started to see this side of the woman.


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Ardity.

In some strange language I never knew, it means "earth," or 
"land." My mother chose this name for me. When she could 
no longer stop the thunder storms from coming, when the sky 
and freedom called and their voice was sweeter than ever, she 
hoped I would be her anchor. It wasn't her powers that were 
slowly failing, it was her will to stop them from controlling 
her; and she had hoped, by this act, to remind herself of how 
earth and land were Mother Nature and life and home. How it 
wasn't always a cage.

That's just how I imagine it, seventeen years later, from 
everything my family has ever told me about her. Maybe 
they're wrong, and I am, too. Maybe earth was always a cage, 
and all that faded away was her ability to hide it. How else do 
you explain the way I sometimes need so much to run away, to 
be in empty space, to be out, away, anywhere, nowhere? Just 
be free. It's her blood that flows in my veins, after all.

But I'm not my mother. I can't fly.

I was, by everything I was told and everything I remember and 
everything I feel I know I was to be her anchor to this land. 
Her little Ardity, her little piece of earth to carry around. But it 
didn't work, did it, mom? I failed before I was even old 
enough to know what was happening.

I remember it. Five years old and knowing nothing, I 
remember watching in terror, I remember my father clinging 
to her leg and trying to pull her down, a madman in rain and 
wind and lightning and thunder, screaming at her not to 
disappear, not to leave, not to give up. Please stay, I need you, 
we love you; please stay, don't lose yourself up there. Please 
stay, please don't let go, Stormy.

It didn't work, did it?

Me and my papa, we both failed to keep her down, keep her 
from laughing and laughing in utter exhilaration - not the 
laugh of some loony, but the jingling bells I remember from 
the happiest fragments of my childhood. And it was with this 
laugh that she gave up and let the wind carry her up there, 
leaving us down here, leaving us with nothing. We both failed, 
me and my father. Neither of us can fly.

When it gets bad, I sometimes go up to the roof of the 
mansion. It rarely clears away the feeling of ground-made bars 
blocking my way, blocking my view, but it helps. When I go 
into town I climb the highest buildings, I lean over the railing 
until someone tells me it's too dangerous. And I can't help but 
think, is it really so terrible, a freefall?

My mother chose to lose herself in the elements. My mother 
could fly. My mother escaped.

I sometimes want out as well.

But I can't fly, and I'll be giving away my life where she gave, 
what? Love? Her child? Her sanity?

For freedom.

It took her years, Ororo Munroe of the X-Men, to give up her 
humanity and become the storm. Never heard from again, I 
imagine her up there every time it's raining. Not my guiding 
angel, but the freedom I'll never have.

I hate to cry. Little drops of salty water coming down - it's just 
too ironic, you know?

This is the roof of my home, where I am a little closer to the 
sky, a little further from the ground. A little further from my 
father, my aunts and uncles and cousins, my friends and loved 
ones. I'm one step out of the cage and I'll never take another 
step.

I'll never go this one more step over the edge of the roof, 
where the railing my father insisted they build there so many 
years ago is broken. I won't keep my eyes trained on the blue 
or darkness of freedom as I step forward, coming so close to 
the empty space of no confines for one glorious moment. I 
won't search for my mother's eyes up there, looking at me 
with that laugh of jingling bells and the smile of nothing but 
happiness, and utter sadness in her eyes that I lost the same 
battle.

Suddenly so tired, I go back to the high window I sneaked up 
here through. I can't fly. I'm a piece of ground more mobile 
than most. Ardity and land and earth, freedom isn't within my 
reach.

As they say, it will all look better once the rain stops.



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