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Mirages of mountain ranges.
I looked out the window and the sky was blazing. Not burning, not shining - blazing, a clean bright flame, orange-pink, with small cold clouds hanging ahead of the color like smoke from a fire. I looked at it from one window, and another, and one more, and after I exhausted my windows I went to the roof to see it in full.
It'd changed a bit, both from my vantage point and what I was looking at: instead of dappling smoke clouds, straight on ahead of me was a canyon, a vast dark gulf pointing towards the horizon in between two bright forms stretching out far to the east, very nearly geometric in shape. The dark canyon had two small points at its western end, and the bright forms, deeply pink, spread out the farther up the sky they got. None of it hit the horizon. Beyond the river and buildings, past all that, there were small clouds stark against the fading colors with clear silhouettes and no texture, doing their best impression of far-off mountains. Above them, more faint clouds helped the illusion, and a near-gash of faded, dry blue a fair bit below the points of the canyon, a few thin slivers of pale clouds strung through the blue, gently curving around to give some crescent shapes.
The wind was blowing over my arms and legs, and under my bare feet, the roof deck was still warm from the day. As I stood there, the canyon widened, the forms shortened, and it was too gradual to see while it happened. I looked at the illusion of mountains and back, and each time, the blue sky was darker, the pinks had faded again, and the canyon kept eroding until it was the same color as the rest of the clouds around it. The air wasn't that cool, with it mostly being the wind itself that gave it some texture against my skin, and I couldn't connect what I was feeling with what I was seeing, even though I saw the mountains changing and the canyon eroding - the clouds were moving at a different pace than that of the wind blowing against me. Even though it was all wind.
It'd changed a bit, both from my vantage point and what I was looking at: instead of dappling smoke clouds, straight on ahead of me was a canyon, a vast dark gulf pointing towards the horizon in between two bright forms stretching out far to the east, very nearly geometric in shape. The dark canyon had two small points at its western end, and the bright forms, deeply pink, spread out the farther up the sky they got. None of it hit the horizon. Beyond the river and buildings, past all that, there were small clouds stark against the fading colors with clear silhouettes and no texture, doing their best impression of far-off mountains. Above them, more faint clouds helped the illusion, and a near-gash of faded, dry blue a fair bit below the points of the canyon, a few thin slivers of pale clouds strung through the blue, gently curving around to give some crescent shapes.
The wind was blowing over my arms and legs, and under my bare feet, the roof deck was still warm from the day. As I stood there, the canyon widened, the forms shortened, and it was too gradual to see while it happened. I looked at the illusion of mountains and back, and each time, the blue sky was darker, the pinks had faded again, and the canyon kept eroding until it was the same color as the rest of the clouds around it. The air wasn't that cool, with it mostly being the wind itself that gave it some texture against my skin, and I couldn't connect what I was feeling with what I was seeing, even though I saw the mountains changing and the canyon eroding - the clouds were moving at a different pace than that of the wind blowing against me. Even though it was all wind.