It was a week-or-so into the annual tornado season. The first tornado siren warning of the season was blaring. The sound was irritatingly loud. The citizens had not been polled about what kind of siren sound they would prefer. It was a small town.

Those who lived there permanently did not need reminders of tornado season; that was most citizens. And so, the warnings would have been welcoming had they been in soft melodious wind chimes.

Because of the annual four months of tornados, the City’s population had never exceeded ten thousand.

The only reason the City came into being two centuries ago was because of the tiny gold pieces that washed and were still washing along on the bed of the river that was one of the boundaries of the town.

The river was deep and wide, and flowed swiftly along the foot of a mountain for five miles into a large lake. The mountain continued farther along, as a wall to the lake.

The mountain was the cause of the river, and the river was the cause of the lake. To this day, nobody had ever cared to guess the cause of the gold alluvia in the river.

The mountain was a steep solid rock, so high that its top was snow-capped most of the year. The melting snow flowing down the mountain turned to river water at ground level. Since the face of mountain was solid rock covered in flowing water from the continuously melting snow, sunlight reflecting off that covering of falling waves of water gave the mountain face a resplendently reflecting murmuring sheen.

Though countless mountaineers had been tempted, to date none had dared to attempt to climb. It was the only in-your-face challengingly climbable mountain in the world with that record.

Over time, the citizens had expertly evolved into designing homes and other structures that were aesthetically and perfectly and hiddenly tornado-proof. Indeed, there was a much publicized tourist attraction that invited people to enjoy light refreshments in one such building while a tornado raged and thrashed about in angry frustration all over it.

While human ingenuity had neutralized most of a tornado’s destruction in the City, there was a section of the City that was protected by nature itself, from the beginning of time.

Just as there was a mighty mountain range at one end of the City that provided it with considerable natural wealth, at the opposite end approximately twenty miles away at the entrance to the City, there was a stretch of mighty solid rock wall approximately thirty feet high that stood in the path of all tornados, cutting their speeds down to less than half.

Additionally, by the end of that rock stretch along the City’s edge, a tornado’s force was so diminished that a naturally dark and magically thick forest of tall trees had flourished on tornado-warm water. The natural darkness in the necromantically dense forest was made darker exponentially during the passage of a malignantly loud tornado.

The City citizens had further cultivated their forest to be a beautiful park, although visits to the park during tornado season was legally discouraged because of the deep debris-laden rushing waters that came with a tornado.

She was a tourist. She came to visit, especially to experience light refreshments indoors in the direct path of an evil-intending raging tornado. Also, she wanted to defiantly walk through a park that featured trees that grew tall in defiance of tornados. By law, she was attired as a male.

Probably because she was a tourist, she had miscalculated.

A tornado hit while she was yet far away from the park on her way to her desired indoor adventure; attired as a most maturely circumspect male tornado adventurer. The thunderous noises and lightning strikes and stinging rain totally confused her. Worse yet, her spectacles were ripped off and away, as the rushing deep waters gleefully and spitefully catapulted her along into the malignant-seeming darkness of the nearly impenetrably thick forest of the tall trees.

The loss of her spectacles was a good thing since it meant that, before she reached the black-magic darkness of the nearly impenetrably thick forest, she could not be further frightened by the wild animals, including poisonous snakes, that were being washed along mindlessly with her all around her, some randomly bumping against her helplessly.

He, too, had been ambushed by the tornado. He was not a tourist; he was born in the City and had lived there all his life. He, too, had miscalculated; and would forever be embarrassed and ashamed why.

He was resignedly but cheerfully clinging to a low muchly-leafy branch of a tree in the forest, fighting against the force of the noisy rushing waters trying to dislodge him to fall victim into their merciless ways. His main concern was that he, being so far out on a muchly-leafy limb, could fall victim to submerged debris.

Fortunately for him, the forest darkness hid from him the snakes and other small reptiles that had managed to access his muchly-leafy tree branch because his clutching it had lowered it enough into the maliciously rushing tornado waters.

Even had he seen her tumbling frantically toward him, there was nothing he could have done to avoid or prevent their collision. As it was, in the thick wet darkness, he did not see her. The mischievously mighty tornado waters crashed her into him.

His instinctive reaction was to free himself from whatever that mighty flotsam debris it was that had been thrown against him. He could do this, of course, with one hand only.

His efforts were chaotic and mighty, and would have succeeded easily had not the turbulent waters and the wildly thrashing muchly-leafy branch, thwartingly interfered.

His hand got entangled in her clothing, just as her clothing got entangled in the muchly-leafy branch.

When her fingers felt his clothing, they instinctively clutched and clinged desperately.

The entanglements turned them to be more of a single entity that increased his and her resistance against the unsympathetic deafening tempestuous winds and waters.

They drew each other closer, and with the assistance of the muchly-leafy branch, they remained in that place for the long minutes it took the waters to diminish.

Because of the interference of the tall trees, tornado swift currents that entered the forest, could maintain their maliciously maximum speeds for only seconds.

He and she were so exhausted that when their feet were on the ground again, they remained in a motionless and utterly exhausted embrace.

One of them mumbled hoarsely, barely audibly, “You realize that in some nations in the world this means you and I will have to get married.”

The other coughed a few times gently before answering, tiredly and, too, hoarsely barely audibly, “You arrange everything; I will pay all expenses.”