A rumble of thunder came then, five whole seconds after the prior flash of lightning, and it was so deep and booming that Orhan felt it in his body, making his heart race and shudder in instinctual fear. His eyes flicking back and forth between the distant wall of dark clouds and Carisa, he mused momentarily that she was lucky she could not hear the thunder, but he abandoned this idea quickly after realizing she would have felt the vibrations, just as he had.
“Would you like to lead?” the mare asked, and Orhan nodded his assent, stepping forward to lead the way across the sands back toward the oasis. Then he hesitated, and angled his head to side-eye the clouds looming above the dark, dancing ocean once more. The storm was still far, but the clouds were rolling in fast: too fast for his liking. He could lead Carisa back to the main oasis to shelter beneath his favorite boulder, but at this rate they would likely be caught in the rain on their trek, and the boulder would not be large enough to shelter them all if both Vesti and Ava were there too.
Then he remembered: there was another option. “This way,” he called over his shoulder unthinkingly, and turned to travel east instead, along the hissing shoreline. The dark water lapped at his feet aggressively as he trotted, his eyes narrowed in an attempt to peer through the shroud of night ahead. For a minute, he could see nothing; then, another bolt of lightning arced across the sky, illuminating the land for a brief moment. It was long enough, however, to reveal tall, dark shapes awaiting them up ahead.
Rain began to fall like hard spittle from the sky just as they reached the sandstone formations, and lightning danced almost continuously among the clouds, revealing surfaces heavily eroded by salty winds into strange and random shapes. There were perhaps a half a dozen of the reddish rocks clustered together like some alien forest, creating arches and caverns amongst them. In the dark, they were almost intimidating. Orhan lead Carisa into the heart of the stones, where their backs would be protected from the worst of the winds and their heads sheltered from the pelting rain.
Thunder rumbled again, and the earth seemed to vibrate beneath his hooves. From beneath his damp forelock, the stallion smiled sheepishly.
“I found this place a few years ago,” he told her, and thought of the day he had returned to the desert after a time spent on the continent. He had washed up on the shore not far from these stones, half-drowned and out of his mind with fever. To his knowledge, no one knew about them but his mother, so he returned to them every so often when he needed a quiet place away from prying eyes.
“It’s my secret refuge.”
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