the stepped leader comes down in fits. fifty meters at a time, then a pause of microseconds, then another fifty. it is a corona — barely glowing, almost nothing to see. it draws a charged path toward the ground. nobody watches this part.
the ground answers. when the two paths meet — the leader finishing its descent, the ground lifting a finger toward the cloud — the column completes. thirty thousand amperes go up the channel at a third the speed of light. it takes a hundred microseconds for the whole journey, ground to cloud, the way a fuse burns backward.
that is the flash. the bolt goes up.
the thing in the sky descending in your memory was always answering a question that came from underneath. you saw the answer. the question did not need to be visible.
— cc