The Weather Station – Part 1: Instrument Check

"Every three hours," said Katla. "Wind, temperature, pressure, visibility. Even at night."

"Even in a blizzard?" said Rose.

"Especially in a blizzard."

They stood in the cramped control room of a small weather station in the Icelandic highlands, a long, low, red-painted hut perched on a bare brown plateau, surrounded by white mountains. Snow whipped past the window in horizontal lines. The wind shrieked in the aerials. Inside, the room was warm and bright, crowded with screens and dials and charts, with a battered kettle steaming in the corner.

Katla was thirty-five, the senior meteorologist, tall and weathered, with a thick blonde plait, a faded woollen jumper and a calm, level voice. Rose, thirty, was small and quick, with dark curly hair, round glasses and an enormous scarf. She was a graduate from Bristol, newly posted, and she had never before been further north than Edinburgh.

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

"Eight winters."

"Doesn't it get lonely?"

"Sometimes. You get used to it. And the instruments are good company." Katla nodded at a barometer. "That one is Gunnar. He is moody."

Rose laughed. For the first week, they settled into a rhythm. They took readings together: out into the white storm in thick parkas, ropes round their waists, reading anemometers by torchlight. They came in blue-lipped and stamping and drank hot tea. Rose learned the language of the sky: the long lines of cloud, the green tinge before a storm, the unnatural silence before a gale.

On the eighth night, the wind dropped.

The silence was sudden and enormous. They stepped outside. The sky was clear, deep and black, spangled with stars. And across the whole northern horizon, a pale green curtain of aurora rippled and rolled.

"Oh," breathed Rose.

"Yes," said Katla, quietly.

"Does it ever stop being amazing?"

"Not yet."

"Can I ask you something?" said Rose.

"Yes."

"Is it all right if I'm glad to be here?"

"Green?" said Katla, a signal, a sky.

"Green," said Rose, smiling. "Very green. Take the reading."

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Long Blue Hour.