I am currently reading Laurell K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series, which can best be described as…Fairy Porn. Maybe I’m exaggerating — maybe it’s just Fairy Erotica.

At any rate, several of the tall, statuesque fairies with silken hair down to their feet are described as gods, or former gods. Merry herself says she is descended from five different fertility deities.

It got me to wondering… if I were a deity, what would be my bailiwick?

The answer came to me almost immediately: I would be a goddess of the weather.

Not all weather, though. Not the brilliant sparkling days of fall, with the cornflower blue sky and air crisper than a Granny Smith apple. Not the golden days of summer, which tempts out the cold-resistant (or people with wet suits) into the frigid Pacific.

Those days are controlled by that other god. The bronzed, golden, surfer type from SoCal, with his carefully draped hair over one eye that is meant to be cool and casual and is anything but.

I would be the goddess of the mist and the rain. The gentle warm rain falling on the corn fields in Iowa. The soft mist that rolls in off the ocean, condensing and dripping on the redwoods. The drizzly annoying rain that lasts for days (I have my moods, just like any other deity) that forces parents and teachers to figure novel ways to entertain small children. The fog that hides the deer from the hunter.

The dark clouds that mass and mass until they cannot contain themselves anymore, sending sheets cascading from the heavens, accompanied by the wild magic of the lightning and thunder.

If I were a god, I would be the Lady of the Storm.

Probably a good thing I’m not.