Hello, and welcome to Drabbletober. This is episode 28, for Monday the twenty-eighth of October 2024.

Breaking the Rainbow

by Elizabeth Guilt

I remember him in kindergarten, throwing stones at the sky. Toddlers are all, at heart, destructive. But he asked strange questions when I taught weather systems in first-year science, and again when we covered refraction in GCSE physics.

He was seventeen when I caught him vandalising the gym.

"What is this?" I demanded.

He shrugged, sigils dribbling paint down the wall. "Weather magic."

I raised concerns with the school counsellor.

It rained this morning. I heard his voice, then I saw the sky shatter. His face drifted past my lab's second floor window as he ascended, blissfully, into multicoloured brilliance.

Rainbows are one of my favourite natural phenomena, and understanding refraction does not make them any less magical or mysterious.