The wire of the fence was forged in flame, but the wirecutter in your hand boasts a fresher, sharper fiery intelligence, and in a minute you duck through. The wind pours through the gap with you and as you climb the hill it changes from loud gusty muttering to a sustained yell.

The text from Jules said to meet at the third pylon. The grass is short, kept mowed by sheep, a common sight on sunny days as they traipse these hillsides spinning sunlight into wool. But tonight the sheep are nowhere to be seen. Above you, presumably, the great blades of the wind turbine turn at the very limit of their design – or have they gone past it? You try to look up, but the night is black and the sky spits too much rain. You listen, but hear nothing but the wind shouting past your ear.

As you reach the second pylon you pause to glance back, and as a stuttering flash of cloud lightning washes over the world you see everything with the clarity of a dream: the whirling blade atop the first pylon, the rainsoaked air, the windlashed grass, the carcass of a hawk face down wings spread at your feet. And far off past the trees, the glow of the city and everything you’re now cut free of.

The third pylon, and Jules is there. Her face appears out of the dark mass of her poncho and as she rises to kiss you there comes that toppling feeling as familiar to you as falling into a well. With one hand you clutch her back and the other steadies you both against the pylon. And through that hand, up your arm, into your chests, into your hearts comes the steady erotic hum of the powerhouse.

Jules is as young as you are, and full of the promise of freedom – from cold, from the dark, from your life as it is. Freedom from everything except consequence. The hum outlasts the thunder. In the morning the sheep will wander out through the hole in the fence onto the roadway, but safe in your house the lights will come on as usual.

– Etta Crossroad