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“I think it’s one of them, Cher.”

I glance at my brother, one of those quick looks where you turn your head just a little, but your eyes move farther, and then I refocus on the road stretching away into the mountains in front of us. I’m not driving, I’m not old enough yet, but my brother taught me how a year ago when I was fourteen, so I’m used to watching the road and I do the invisible brake thing with my foot if I’m not behind the wheel.

He’s Stillman, nineteen, home from college for the summer. I’m Sheridan, but I spell my name with a Ch so it’s Cheridan instead, because that’s how Stillman says it and I like the way it comes out of his mouth, like he’s half breathing it.

Ahead of us, the mountains near Prescott are swathed in storm clouds. It’s a big storm, one of the ones where the clouds are humongous and dark and grey. You know the ones where you look at them and you think now that is what billowing looks like because it really is, they really pour over the sky, like some god spilled tea and it’s glopping all over the sky and slipping through the cracks of the tabletop, which is the heavens, and dripping to the floor, which is rain falling to the earth.

I see a faint shot of lavender lightning-ish stuff flicker through the clouds all serpent-like and the whole mass of clouds shiver. I shiver too. My stomach squirms and my feet start to tingle and my fingers start to go numb and I tighten my butt in excitement because since I saw the kind-of lightning I know it really is one of those special storms.

“It’s Them, it’s Them,” I say, just because I feel like saying it aloud. I don’t have to, because I’m leaning forward drumming my fingers on the dashboard, so Stillman already knows it’s Them, but I really like saying it aloud because I get even more excited.

Stillman smiles his soft little girl smile and leans to the side to turn up Enya, which is the copy of his CD that I made because he took his real one to college with him and I wanted it too. He skips to The Celts because he really likes the song and because he understands most of it since he’s studying Gaelic and those old fairy tales and Old Irish culture in college, but I change it to I Want Tomorrow because I think the line about men from the sun is more appropriate for Arizona and what Stillman and I are doing, even though the rest of the song is a little sad.

This is Stillman’s and my thing that we do every summer during monsoon season. We call it Rain Chasing, which makes sense because we really do chase rain, we drive after thunder storms and try to reach them while they’re still downpouring. We’ve been doing it since Stillman got his license, so we’ve been Rain Chasing for almost four years. We don’t tell normal people about it because normal people wouldn’t understand, and I’m already considered “weird” and Stillman surpassed me a long time ago to “strange,” but the two of us love it, the chase, the thrill, and most of all the find. Stillman just likes to watch because he’s a little shy and because of some other heavier reasons, but I like to dance.

I’m all dressed for the occasion and everything, since all the Others there will look fancy too. I’ve got on one of those long, lacy skirts that go all the way to the ankles and have three layers: the tight underskirt, the real skirt part, and then the gauzy top layer. Mine’s purple, my favorite color, and Their’s too, even though purple isn’t really a desert color, but I guess Their kind likes purple wherever They’re from, and it’s the color of the lightning-manifest Stillman and I can see in Their storms. My shirt is white and sheer with a low neckline and I’m not wearing a bra and the AC is on high so I’m cold and my shirt is hugging a bit around my chest, but the sleeves are the wide elf-y, gypsy bell sleeves and that’s all I care about. I’ve got swirls and circles and feathers all over my body too that I drew with sparkly costume makeup crayons and a black hawk under my left eye that I drew with an ultra fine sharpie. I have my necklace on a long string so that the pentagon pendant hangs all the way to my belly button and will swing when I dance.

A droplet of rain lands on the windshield and I shriek. Rain, rain, rain!

Stillman tenses and nearly slams on the brakes. His old car jerks and coughs and I laugh because the rain gets harder.

“Shhh--! Dear Goddess, Cheridan!”

I laugh and slouch down in my seat and put my bare feet on the dashboard. I haven’t even brought shoes. Still has. His sneakers are in the back seat though, so he’s up here barefoot too, driving with his monkey rock-climbing toes.

I am so far along the way from lucidity to flighty, absent nirvana that I don’t even tease a ridiculous comment back about Stillman watching his language or watching the road and not bothering with distractions in the car, but I’m pretty far on to drugged-up-ish ridiculousness, so I just giggle madly and drum my bare feet and wiggle my toenails with their three day old flaky polish on the dashboard and I howl like a blue-headed chick on the way to a punk rock concert. Stillman shakes his head and pretends to be serious and grumpy, but he ends up grinning and chuckling and he turns up Enya to try and hide it, but I know what he’s doing because he does this and I do this all the time so I just laugh harder.

The thunder comes and then real lightning, the Ben Franklin, kite type of lightning, not the wild, self-mobile purple shocks Stillman and I see. I yell and bounce and wiggle and pound on the window with both palms. The rain is falling in torrents, the drops the size of walnuts, or so it seems to me in my state of semi-deliriousness, and the rain and clouds and the greyness and the two kinds of lightning make me even more mentally-absent and crazy.

“Pull over, pull over, pull over, pull over!” I’m shrieking, and I’m banging on the window and yanking at my seat belt and pressing my cheeks against the glass and I’m yelling to the outside past the car window, and Stillman is yelling at me to relax and be quiet because he can’t drive with all of my noise and we’ll pull over once there’s a place to, but I am crazycrazy- ridiculous and I can barely hear him, because I have purple lightning in my ears and mist in my eyes and I am wild, wild, wild, and then the car stops and the engine’s off, and I’m yelling still and yanking at my seatbelt still and I can’t get it off and I think Stillman unbuckles me and then reaches behind me and opens the door but I’m not sure because I am already outside and there’s rain in my hair and my eyes and my mouth and my ears and my skin and I am running running running and They are with me and I’m dancing with Them I am dancing like I am barely human and like maybe I’m half of Them which maybe is true because I can see Them and Their lightning but I know I am still too much human because I am intoxicated with Their smell and Their bodies and Their breath and Their transparency and Their nakedness and Their dance and Their lightning and I can feel Their fingers down my throat and in my stomach and Their breath is sweeping across the contours of my heart and my human-ness and my humanity and Their non-feet are all over me and all over my soul and I’m floating above Them and I am falling beneath Them and we are dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing everywhere and all across my Self and there’s rain and wind and noise and clouds and dance and rain and Them and I am somewhere else and I don’t know where I am but They are with me and we’re dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing…

And then I’m looking up into Stillman’s round, grave face and I am a little ashamed, because I remember now why he never dances and it’s because I always dance too far away from our Here and too far into Their There, and if Stillman wasn’t here to remind me that I’m a human then I wouldn’t be one anymore and I’d be gone.

I’m breathing hard. I look past Stillman’s strawberry hair-fluff and I see that the rain is over, long over, and the clouds are dispersing and the sun is creeping towards middle-evening. Stillman picks me up because my legs are marmalade-y and my feet are bloody and bleeding from dancing and I’m exhausted inside and outside and in my soul. Then I see them, standing a little ways away, all of them grinning and laughing and it’s musical and scary because they look almost human but I can feel them tingling on the edges of my brain and that’s not a human thing to do, that’s a FEY thing. Stillman tightens his hands around my thigh and my shoulder, and now I remember why They’re so dangerous and I feel like an idiot. They’re the FEY, and They are far from the Fey Folk of Ireland and Great Britain. These are Arizona FEY. They’re wild and vicious and dangerous and untamed and untranslatable and poisonous and deadly. They’re not elven or sylvan or leprechaun-ian or fairy-ish at all. These are raw and uncut and fresh and ancient and ground into the wildness and untamedness of the rocks and trees and sky and landscape. They don’t have a different fairy realm here like the European story types because They are the realm here. They’re FEY. They’re FEY, They’re FEY, They’re FEY.

Stillman turns around and walks away, and I can tell he’s disgusted because his nostrils are flaring and the muscle underneath his left eyebrow is twitching a little and he’s clinging to me like I am a FEY and I’m going to flit away and destroy myself in the purple lightning. I can hear the FEY laughing still, inside my head, against my heart, and I snuggle close Stillman’s chest as he hikes back to his wreck of a car. He squeezes me and I snuggle closer and then I can’t hear the FEY anymore and I’m smiling.

This is why I love Stillman so much, because he’s my brother and he watches out for me and carries me and blows in my face and listens to Enya and comes home from college to see me and let’s me dance and hates the FEY and sees the FEY and because he takes me Rain Chasing and then makes sure I come home and because he loves me too.