Common

she was alone, and she liked it.

Lighting thrashed across the open sky above her head, drawing jagged lines between clouds so dark and full of rain that she couldn't see the blue beyond. The storm had finally come, and she relished in the way the water made everything smell fresh and new again. It washed away the dusty odor of the hundreds of souls that had crisscrossed the common lands, leaving something pristine in its wake. She loved the way the thunder was unimpeded by trees here; it crackled across the sky above and reverberated through her very bones until her teeth clattered against each other in her mouth.

The tropical storms she'd grown up with beneath the boughs of the Paradisian jungle had been ferocious, but she'd never really felt a part of them. They had happened so far above her head that it was often easy to ignore their existences, shielded as they were from her curious gaze by the canopy above. Her mother had always made sure that she was tucked away during them, safe inside the sheltering dark depths of her childhood home.

But this? This made her feel alive.

The young mare stood in the center of the Commons, her golden face upturned toward the torrential downpour. Rain drove into her skin, stealing away the body heat that she had managed to regain after landing ashore and she shivered beneath its steady lash. There was surprisingly less wind here than there often was in Paradise. Still, she smiled. Her heart thrummed in excitement every time the sky overhead flashed with another streak of lightning, and she would hold her breath each time until the resulting thunder rippled across the world.

She stayed this way until the storm moved on, the thunder and lightning sliding northeast, away from the Commons and the young girl whose heart chased after it with longing. It is only when the rain had mostly abated (now falling in gentle, translucent sheets rather than the wall of darkness that had surrounded her only moments before) that the young girl lowered her face from the sky and peered outward, at the area that surrounded her.

Still shivering, she lowered her head to the grass and began to graze on the freshly cleansed blades, relishing the taste of rainwater on her tongue.

mare - 2 - lusitano mutt - 16.3hh - dunskin roan blanket - tyr x sonorae - loveinspired