A summer thunderstorm dumped buckets of rain, flooding the streets.  Two women and a man sat sipping lattes. The three shared the same high forehead and thick thighs. The trio sat and looked out the window, watching.

A blinding bolt of lightning appeared out of a cloud and flashed above them. It blazed in one piercing second, spreading a web of stitches across the sky and exploded with a loud crack that rattled the café window. The older woman flinched, narrowing her eyes and leaning backwards.

The man, sitting in the middle, whistled through his teeth. “Superior light show. Huge juju,” he marveled. “But a little too close for comfort!”

The lightning had collided with a metal drainpipe across the street. As it struck, flames shot up, flared for a moment, and then sputtered in the rain, disappearing into a whiff of smoke.

The younger woman, asked, “What is lightning, anyway?

“It’s when negative and positive connect.” The man tented his fingertips to show her. “It stabilizes energies. Looks destructive— but in the end, it evens things out.”

She looked around his shoulders and said to the woman on the other side of him, “Lee– Were you scared?”

Lee shook her head gripped the cup she was holding and brought it to her lips. In the street, an orange cone floated on its side, adrift in the rushing water.

“That thunder,” the youngest began. “It was like a bomb going off. For a split second I thought— it could have been a nut with a rifle.  Anything can happen, you know?” She went on in a breathless burst of words. “I read somewhere that a man got struck by lightning on a golf course. And that afterwards he became—like a savant. Spoke perfect Swahili and Cantonese. Became a saint. Healed people with just a brush of his hands.  It was a miracle.”

Lee finally spoke. “No,” she said. “This lightning was a message.”

The man looked up from staring at his coffee. “What? Like God pronouncing judgement from the hole in the ozone?”

“No,” she answered. “A message. From mother.”

The other two sat in silence as her words hung in the air.

After a moment, “Yeah,” the man said.  “You see mother everywhere.”