Lu is the youngest of the cloud gods. She hangs in the lowest levels of the sky, furthest from the cosmos, closest to Earth. 

 

Although young and low, Lu has grand scope and scale. Over the centuries we have read glimpses of Lu as different scenes - a vision of the afterlife, the home of the Gods, a lost city. Lu has always been able to come and go, shift shape and form, and sometimes disappear completely. 

 

Shapeshifting gods, although fluid and malleable, often find themselves stuck - trapped by ice, by planes, birds, meteors, smoke. What we see as storms are often shape shifting gods battling to get free. 

 

When we have laid the trap, and a God is caught in our smoke, our planes, our missiles, the shapeshifters punish us. They send rain, snow, sleet, hail. Often, even when it isn’t us, we feel their wrath anyway. Nothing can hurt us more than a trapped God, there is nothing more to fear. 

 

Our oldest legends warn of a day of no escape - the eclipse - the day that Lu is lost in the skies, and we are lost to Lu. Stories warn us that trapped Lu, desperately trying to free herself, will grow taller and taller, wider and wider. As she fights, Lu will expand endlessly until she covers the entire surface of the Earth. Eventually, in the midst of the never ending cloud around us, we will lose our human frame and simply be reduced to our reflection on her surface. 

 

Now, we find ourselves with a tower of grey in the sky. The endless fires have produced a thick layer of ash, a trap from which Lu cannot escape. We are at the eclipse. Our cloud is Lu. If you look closely, she is expanding - up, out and down. Each day Lu gets lower in the skies, inches closer to our surface. 

 

As we meet the eclipse we will become the cloud, and the cloud will become us. We are nothing without it.