“Hey, Rowan,” Livia’s voice drifted to me, “Cutting
academy? Snow day?” My best friend laughed and plopped down in the sand next to
me curling her legs beneath her. She stuck her tongue out to catch fluttering snowflakes.
“More like sun
day.” I swatted at an orange sand beetle ducking for cover under my raised
leg. It was a rare day along the Almeria coast that we had a good span of
sunshine before the weather changed or asteroid particles barraged us. But it
was the first time it’d snowed in the Sun Pole since the Shifts encroached upon
the southern part of the planet two years ago. Still, Coastal Almeria never got
snow, not even before the Shifts. The southern half of the planet lived in
daylight, but we’d increasingly began to see the dark side of the planet grow closer
to the Sun Pole, bringing with it these strange weather patterns. I shivered again, a
bit of a freak-out going on inside me as I slipped on my overcoat.
