The Sind Rains

The Khroun may be one of the most feared sounds in the Sind Desert, and quite common, but there is another weather phenomenon which is always received with great pleasure, even though it can also be quite dangerous.
The rains are sparse, and when they come are only in the summer months, but they lead to celebration and great rejoicing among the nomads. When the first rains of the season come, the nomads will come out of their tents and dance among the raindrops, faces turned up to catch the water in their mouths, despite their clothes getting drenched. All the dust gets washed out of the air and off clothing and packages to settle on the ground, leaving everything seeming fresher and more brightly coloured. Even the air feels lighter and more scented, and people claim to have smelled everything from the (very far distant) sea to flowers to citrus to turpentine.
Puddles form and the dust forms a slick thin mud layer over the stony pavement, pebbles which had been locked together now shifting between a careless foot, taking the impression and holding it for posterity, filling up with water.
When they arrive, the rains usually last for a few hours and then they are gone and the sun shines again. The puddles reflect the sun so the surface is a twinkling galaxy of lights, and everywhere it steams.
Although all visible surface water is gone within a few hours in the relentless heat, clearly some soaks into the ground, because within a day the thorn bushes put out incongruously bright, lush flowers in pinks, purples and yellows, and shoots of grasses and other low flowering plants spread across the land, softening the harsh edges in a haze of green, dotted with blue, red, white, yellow, pink, purple and orange. Beetles emerge, flying from flower to flower in an orgy of collection and fertilisation, and herds of antelope, wild horses, asses and goats congregate, filling their stomachs from the lush meadows which have suddenly sprung up as if out of nowhere.
The rains may come a few more times before the harsh heat and dryness resumes, the grasses dry out and wither, the flowers fade. But before they die, the plants manage to set seed, mostly tiny seeds flung out by exploding pods drifting across the land in the returning harsh winds, ready to lodge in cracks and crevices and wait out the months and years until the rains come again.

Type

Natural