The Gulf Alight

Ten minutes on, and the sky has stopped being polite about it. Everything the dawn had been rehearsing in the half-dark it now performs at full volume. Orange laid over orange, a molten seam poured straight down the middle of the bay, the hills gone the deep red of iron lately off the forge. The water takes all of it and hands most of it back. There is a word for this hour in every language on earth and not one of them has ever been quite the right word.