In day’s-end colors, the clouds were as two monsters at each other, seeking to subsume the other and emerge ever more monsterish.  There was a red one and a yellow one, and there was nothing congenial in the way they converged.  The red monster was gulping down the yellow one.  Still though, even when wholly consumed, the yellow one shone through the belly of the red.  Till it didn’t.  And yet, as it faded, the yellow dragged the red down with it.  Soon, the horizon was dark — only indefinite outlines were left visible in the faintest moonlight.  Do not forget, he reminded himself on a postcard he mailed to himself, that there is also given to us the storm before the calm.