Forecast

Forecast was a tall, watchful crane who could not, she was always careful to say, see the future. "I want to be clear about that. I don't know what will happen — nobody does. What I do is read the sky over each road and tell you what that road tends to bring. It's not a promise. It's a forecast. You still choose which road to walk." She lived at a crossroads near the top of the valley, where two paths ran off toward two horizons, and with her long neck and patient eyes she could see weather coming that you couldn't yet see from the ground.

A young fox named Bryn arrived in a hurry, the way creatures do when a feeling is loud and a choice is right in front of them. Someone had wronged him; he had a sharp thing he could do about it — now, fast, satisfying — his paw already halfway toward doing it. "I'm going to do it," Bryn said. "I've decided." Forecast tilted her head, friendly and unhurried. "You might. You get to. But before you take that road — want to know what the sky over it usually looks like, a little further along? You can still choose it after. I just like folks to know the weather they're walking into."

Bryn hesitated. The now-feeling was so loud it filled his whole head. "It feels good right now," he admitted. "That's all I can see. Just the good part." "That's the thing about a loud feeling," Forecast said gently. "It's not lying to you — the sunny first hour is real. But a loud feeling only shows you the first hundred steps of a road, the weather right at your feet. It never shows you the afternoon. It speaks for the right-now you and drowns out the later you, who has to actually live down the road." She raised a wing toward the sharp road. "May I? I won't tell you not to walk it. I'll just point out what's gathering past where the loud feeling can see. It starts sunny — the sharp thing feels great for about an hour. Then, see the clouds pile up? That's where they do a sharp thing back. And that grey stretch further on — that's the days of sharp-for-sharp, nobody remembering who started it, you tired and it still not fixed. Sunny at the start, storm by the afternoon. Not always. Usually."