Deadline for Writers. 12 Short Stories in 12 Months – January– Prompt: Glow– Word Count: 1200.

There was no doubt. The clouds were beautiful.

They rose thin and silver above the city after sunset, stretching like brushstrokes high across the darkening atmosphere. Photos appeared on feeds within minutes, as they had done night after night for months now. Timelapses, filters, slow-motion pans scored with ambient music. The same sky, endlessly re-posted.

Lena stood on the balcony of her flat, phone in hand, watching the display with a growing sense of unease. As a meteorologist, she knew what Noctilucent clouds were, or at least, what they were thought to be. Ice crystals forming at the edge of space, reflecting sunlight long after it had slipped below the horizon. They were rare. Delicate. Almost impossible to see this far south.

At least, that was how it used to be.

They had been increasing in frequency for decades, and nobody knew why. An uptick in rocket launches was one theory, changes in atmospheric composition another. But the truth was simpler and more troubling: no one really knew. Until recently, the change had been too subtle to test.

But not now.

Lena’s phone chimed. A colleague had sent her a link to the latest images.

Isn’t this incredible?! You seeing this from your place?!

She didn’t reply. Instead, she closed her eyes, atmospheric models unfolding behind her eyelids, virtual fingers adjusting variables faster than conscious thought. Noctilucent clouds required very specific conditions. Extreme cold at high altitude. Precise moisture levels. Stable chemistry.

None of this made sense. Not everywhere. Not all at once.

Still, there was no denying it.

They were beautiful.

Within weeks, the glow became routine.

People planned their evening walks around it. Influencers across the globe elbowed each other out, desperate to be the one streaming at ‘peak luminescence’. Couples proposed beneath shimmering skies. The clouds grew brighter, thicker, and the world was transfixed.

‘We don’t fully understand why they’re increasing so rapidly,’ Lena said during her first podcast interview, ‘The data suggests changes in the mesosphere that shouldn’t be happening at this scale.’

The host smiled sympathetically. ‘But they’re harmless, right? We’ve observed them for years.’

‘We don’t know that,’ Lena replied, ‘We’ve never observed this pattern before.’

Her segment aired between a weather report and a viral cloud-light dance clip. It didn’t trend.

Lena spent her days with colleagues, studying the sky and chasing meaning in their compiled data sets. They published papers. They emailed news agencies and broadcasters around the world. They catalogued anomalies: temperatures dropping where they should rise, jet streams bending into unfamiliar paths.

The clouds were no longer thin veils. They were thickening, layering, glowing through the night with such steady intensity that even the stars struggled to compete.

‘Why are we the only ones worried?’ Lena asked one evening, exhaustion sharpening her voice. ‘We don’t know what’s happening. Why does nobody care about that?’

A week later, the city no longer needed streetlights.

Everybody loved that.

You Won’t BELIEVE What the Sky is Doing Right Now!

The Glow crept into everything.

Restaurants dimmed their interiors so patrons could watch the sky through glass ceilings. Health and Wellness apps rushed to add special Cloud-Light Sessions (one-time 50% discount, get it before it’s gone!) The latest iPhone shipped with dedicated filters: soften the Glow, sharpen the Glow, enhance it into something entirely unreal.

Lena stopped scrolling.

The world was obsessed, but nobody was actually looking.

She stepped back onto her balcony, notebook tucked beneath her arm, ready to log new observations. Her eyes ached from so many long evenings spent staring upward. At first, she thought it was just fatigue.

But she had definitely seen it.

The clouds were pulsing. Faintly. As if breathing.

That was new.

She rushed inside, grabbing whatever equipment she could, hands trembling as data streamed across her screen. Rhythmic fluctuations in light intensity, synchronised across hundreds of kilometres. Not random. Possibly not natural.

At the next conference, she abandoned caution.

‘This isn’t just atmospheric,’ she said, her voice cracking as it carried through the auditorium, ‘Something is altering upper-atmospheric chemistry on a scale we’ve never observed, perhaps on a global scale. These are precursors to structural collapse. Thermal inversion failures. Ozone destabilisation. We need to look through these clouds, otherwise… otherwise…’

A murmur rippled through the audience. Someone laughed, nervous and reflexive.

‘Dr Hoskins,’ a panellist asked gently, ‘What exactly are you suggesting?’

Lena almost screamed in exasperation.

‘I’m suggesting that for God’s sake, we stop admiring this, this… symptom, and start investigating the cause!’

The next morning, she made the news.

SCIENTIST SAYS PRETTY CLOUDS MIGHT BE BAD!

It was her most shared appearance yet. All those laughing emojis pushed it into the global top ten.

The first failures were subtle.

Satellite signals dropped during peak glow. GPS lagged. Migratory birds veered off-course, confused by nights that no longer darkened. Insomnia spiked. So did headaches, vivid dreams and unexplained nausea.

People blamed stress. Screen time. Perhaps Mercury was in retrograde. It was hard to tell anymore.

Lena was quietly uninvited from conferences, but she kept working. She had noticed something else.

The Glow seemed to be responding.

It brightened during mass events – things like concerts, festivals and championship finals – moments where people gathered together with their heads tilted upwards, phones raised, feeds refreshing in real time. The clouds intensified, as if feeding on the attention itself.

Then, one night, the power went out.

Entire districts fell dark. Screens died and buildings went silent.

The Glow remained.

It burned brighter than ever, bathing the city in cold silver light. People poured into the streets, cheering, still filming despite dead networks, holding useless phones aloft out of pure habit.

Lena pushed through the crowd, screaming until her throat burned.

‘Go inside!’ she yelled, ‘Look away!’

No one listened.

She made it back to her lab, fumbling in the dark, desperate for answers. Even now. Especially now. All she wanted was to understand.

But it seemed like she was the only one who did.

By the time Lena stepped back outside, the sky had changed completely.

No longer silver, it glowed a deep, luminous white, smooth and unbroken from horizon to horizon. The stars were gone. The moon was reduced to a pale smudge.

People stood motionless, faces still lifted, but with expressions slack with awe.

‘It’s a trap!’ Lena screamed, running through the crowds, ‘There’s no going back – once it locks, the atmosphere won’t cycle. Heat won’t escape. Can’t you see? This is bad, really bad!’

A man near her laughed softly. ‘You worry too much,’ he said. ‘Relax. Just… look at it.’

She looked.

And for one, terrible moment, she understood.

The clouds were perfect. They drew her in, numbed her senses. Endless. Comforting. No shadows, no uncertainty. A feeling of serenity that made it easier to stare than to think.

She forced her focus away and squeezed her eyes shut.

‘It wants us to keep watching!’ she screamed, ‘Don’t you feel it?! Don’t you see?!’

Around her, people stood bathed in light, scrolling empty screens, waiting for something new to happen. Somewhere, a child began to cry. One woman lowered her phone, confusion flickering across her face…

But no one else moved.

Why would they?

The Glow asked nothing of them but attention.

And they had given it all they had.