A Pattern of Shadows

It was the shank of the summer, when the sun is so hot and the air so humid that it’s all you can do just to suck in air. The green grass had turned a sort of scorched brown, and the trees had grown extra leaves just to replace the ones that had shriveled up and burnt off. The sky was so parched that it refused to rain, and the ground practically turned to dust beneath your feet. That’s how hot it was that summer, and that’s why what happened played out the way that it did.