She felt uncomfortable with this argument. If she extended it to living things, she did not like it at all. But tools and buildings? A little breeze tickled the backs of her legs; when she looked up, the cloud wisps warned of the storm coming. The breeze did not die, but continued a steady push. She imagined herself on a roof tomorrow, or even a ladder… no. She would let it go. Her own roof, at dawn. The center’s roof, perhaps.

In the morning, despite a thick mugginess, a slow unrefreshing movement of air proved the storm’s location off to the southeast. Ofelia placed a ladder carefully and climbed up to check her own roof. The fabricator had produced rooftiles of some composite material, lighter than clay tiles but tough and longlasting. The colonists had re-roofed only five years before they left, as much from prudence as need. As Ofelia expected, the rooftiles were sound, uncracked. A few had loosened; these she beat down into place with new spikes.

From her roof it was easy to see across the sheep meadow to the brush and forest beyond. The sheep were down at the far end, near the shuttle field, a dirty grayish mass. She could not see most of the meadow near the river; it was hidden by other buildings. But she could see part of the shuttle field, now mostly overgrown with terraforming grasses.

She climbed down, dragged the ladder to the center, and climbed up again. The center’s roof was more complex, since it covered a larger building and had been designed to gather rainwater as well. In the early days, the colonists had not known how easy it would be to purify the river water, and they had depended on rainwater stored in cisterns.

Ofelia hated climbing around on the center roof. Parts were steeper; the valleys where angles came together were slippery and difficult. The roof had not leaked in the other sea-storm; she could probably let it go this time. A stubborn sense of duty took her up to the first ridgeline. It felt harder than the last time she’d climbed up. She got a knee across the ridgeline and sank down to rest. Her heart thudded; her breath came short; she could not see as well as she wanted.

When she looked back across the roof of her house to the sheep meadow, she saw movement in the brush. She sat motionless; she could not have moved if someone had prodded her. Out of the brush came a trio of reddish animals smaller than the sheep. Tails high, they ran across the grass, disappearing behind her house.

Climbers. Her breath came back with a rush as she recognized them. Forest climbers, as she’d thought. One appeared on the roof of her house, long arms busy… was it prying up her roof tiles? A long slender paw to its mouth — it was eating something that nested there. Sweat broke out, relief. The climbers had never been a menace. She had nothing to worry about unless they pried rooftiles off, and even that was not a serious threat.

She waved her own arms, and the climber froze, tail stiffly raised. “Shoo!” she yelled. The climber jerked as if shot, then scampered over the roof and disappeared. Moments later, all three appeared again, racing across the grass to the brush. She caught little glimpses of red bodies moving between the scrub, then they were gone.

There was something to be said for climbing on roofs after all. She felt lighthearted, childish again, and had to remind herself firmly that she could not caper here. She looked around, and saw nothing else interesting. The center’s rooftiles all fit snugly; none were cracked. The only real danger would be a stoppage in the cistern overflow outlets. Slowly, carefully, she climbed back down the roof, and the ladder. She could check the cistern overflows from the ground.

The weather monitor displayed the storm’s track and projected course. The first squalls should hit the next day, and the main storm on the day following. Ofelia dragged her mattress the rest of the way into the sewing room, and put it under one of the tables. She felt restless; she could not settle to her beadwork or any other activity. She had gathered in the food — she would make a last couple of rounds through the gardens until the storm closed in, since the vegetables would continue to ripen. But otherwise — she watched the cap of clouds cross the sky, a great arc that hour by hour closed over her world like a lid, first white and then darker and darker gray.

The first squalls were actually a relief. Ofelia was in the center; she stood by the door to the lane and watched the wind drive the rain before it. She wished the center had a second floor, a place from which she could see farther, perhaps even to the forest. She wondered if the big trees bent and swayed like the small ones in the village. She wondered how the forest climbers survived such storms… did they stay in the trees, which must be swaying back and forth, or did they huddle on the ground? All day the squalls continued, the breaks between them shorter and the wind never completely still. Ofelia laid out the project she intended to work on, and between squalls went back to her own house for things she had forgotten: seeds she had collected, ends of yarn from old projects, her favorite yarn needle, her best thimble.

She was going to make another of the network garments… this one more festive than the last. She put on the first, to remind herself where she wanted to make changes. She wanted something that made her feel like the storms: something that evoked wind and rain and lightning and thunder. Beating the scraps of metal into bell-shapes had taken longest. She could have had the fabricator mold bell-shapes, but then she could not have listened to them, choosing the shape that fit the sound she wanted. Far back in her memory lay a field-trip to a costume museum; the guide — docent, her mind said, casting up the old word along with the memory of sound — had shaken the costumes made for carnival wear, and she had thought then how like rain some of them sounded. Now she had small thin cylinders to crimp onto fringe… it tinkled coolly Yes. Bigger, rounder shapes of copper gave a mellower sound, water trickling into deep water.

The weather monitor beeped its main storm warning while she was still playing with the sounds, still making tinkling fringe and tonkling strings to hang from her shoulders. She went in and turned off the warning signal. The storm would strike full force the next morning. She should sleep while she could. It was surprisingly hard to sleep. Although she’d napped in several houses, she had not spent the night in any but her own after the first few months alone. She had become used to the bigger bed, the wider mattress. The center had its own set of night noises, and outside the squalls rolled over, boisterous and loud. She finally slept in spite of herself, and woke late to a steady sustained roar. It was still dark outside; she checked the weather monitor and found that the storm had accelerated slightly, coming onshore several hours before the prediction.

Dawn came slowly under that blanket of cloud and flying water. Ofelia wasn’t really hungry for breakfast; she went back to her project, trying not to hear the noise outside. But the wind’s noise rose and rose; even the center shivered from time to time in the gusts. Was her house all right? It was tempting to open the door and look, but she knew better. She quit working with the metal dangles — she couldn’t hear their various tones — and went back to painting and stringing beads.

Her ears ached slightly as the pressure dropped and dropped. She felt tired, and finally lay down again in midmorning. Silence woke her. She went to open the door. There it was again — the eerie center of the storm, with bright sunlight shining from a deep blue sky. Later in the day than last time; it was afternoon. Ofelia walked over to her house. Windblown rain had pried its way around the front door seals, leaving a wet patch on her floor, but she found no other damage.