Talk to nice sleep.

Part 3. Summer. Season of the Copper Rose.

The full series, all four parts of Profit of the Hallowed Corpse, is available on Patreon.

Hear the rest of the series without waiting for part 4.

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Rain comes in June. The first showers on the mesa since Harlow's arrival. One night,

awaking from a nightmare, he hears the soft padding of droplets on the roof of his yurt.

He lies for hours in the dark, just listening. The next morning, the lawn is wet and muddy, and the central pool is filled to the edge

and overflows as children tousel and splash. The rain brings new shades of green, blue, and gold

to the top land, and the panoramic view of the plains below glows watercolor bright, dotted

with the sunny blossoms of prickly

pear cactuses. And with the rain and the colors come also, new visitors. Western bluebirds

cluster in the branches of the ponderosa pine, and wake the mesa folk each dawn with their sweet

and mournful melodies. The desert milkweeds bloom and play host to the migration of monarch butterflies,

so that the days are filled with a silent flapping of small orange wings.

And in the evening, swarms of crickets gather in the green eye,

their summer song a strange and lovely counterpoint to the drums

and flutes and Ezekiel's guitar. By the first week of July, the monsoon season has reached

its peak. Moist air swirling in from the southwest and the distant east clash above the plains,

birthing anvil-shaped storm clouds, like little angry

gods.

Thunder claps, rumbles, and rolls.

...