A Dust Storm

News from the underworld that morning was that Sydney, Australia, had been blanketed in a dust storm of Outback red dirt.
When Carrie asked Elazar Moss about it, he told her that it truly had been apocalyptic in nature. He kept expecting a loud voice from the sky to bellow, ‘Repent!’

The day was mostly clouded over in gray.
Linnea had a gymnastics class and youth group.
Francis was working for the neighbors, finishing papers, and later ‘studying’ geography down by the river with a fort, bonfire, and Creole, with a sack of Dairy Queen.
Carrie was feeling somewhat under the weather, likely having caught whatever it was that Dad had picked up in Iowa the previous week.

That night, on Collette’s jog, the skies were still gray, giving the moon the appearance of being covered in mist. And the houses in the neighborhood, some of them lit with little blue garden lights, looked almost Myst-like in the evening shadows and dark green trees.