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LIGHTNING
743 words
There was no calm before the storm. The sky was swollen with bruised clouds, heavy with promise of rain that had not yet fallen. She stood in the middle of a clear field with an incline hill to her left, staring upwards at the threatening storm. She was tense, she could feel every muscle in her body tight and ready to spring, anxiety making one of her tail twitch. The plains were familiar to her - where she was raised, but certainly never home - and knowing there was nothing there for her, she wasn't sure why she was there.
Lightning lit the clouds in veins of hot white and bloated purple, thunder on the heels of the light show. It made her back feel tight, but she didn't give her ground.
Give ground? To what?
Memories. Every obstacle I've overcome.
Lightning ripped out of a cloud and struck the hill to her left. The Kiokote flinched, but she did not jump nor stumble. In the threads of the bolt that disappeared, she saw them - her family, the herd that raised her. Backlit so clearly in that moment: her father, staring off into the distance, as he always had more important things to concern himself with; her mother, looking at her, but even the sway of her tail held such disappointment at a distance; her siblings, younger and frolicking, unaware of her entirely. That was her old life, and as the bolt disappeared, so too did the family portrait. Her father, bred in tradition. Her mother, trying to impart the same upon her. Her arrogance, her pride in what she was, but --
Another bolt, the lightning crackling over the plains, an Acha's form lit with bones through it. Dark Descent. The Kiokote caught her breath, breathing in the scent of burnt desert that came with his brief visage. She took a step towards him, but no further. He was the reason she wasn't here anymore - or was he? Wasn't it in her, that the decision was made? Her Dark would follow her to the stars if that's where she wanted to be, so wasn't it ultimately her that had decided the plains were not home? The bolt withdrew, taking her Acha with it, leaving her in a moment of darkness akin to his name.
They had gone to the desert. She had called it home, because it was where he was birthed. She knew now - much later than she would have liked to have admitted - that home was together. Where...where was of no consequence. As the MotherFather had said, if the Swamp burned away into nothing, what would she do?
I would continue. As I always have.
She carried that life in her, that blessing. Even as another bolt struck closer to her, enough to set the fur of her body on edge, she didn't move. Instead, she saw her fear: herself, alone, with empty eggs strewn about - not the picture of children gone, but of children not born. She breathed in sharply, and surely, the scent of death came with this strike. It struck her to her core - being unable to have a family, a true family of her own, raised without hatred for other races and ensuring open, beautiful minds. No, she told the image as it began to fade into splotches, I will continue. I wont give up.
That was the story of her life, wasn't it? Never giving up - never pausing, never allowing herself to be seduced from the path that was true to her heart. Leaving her family, being with Descent, meeting all she had and being touched by the MotherFather - she had created this path. It was hers.
Lighting struck down suddenly and wildly around the plains, white hot and making Ascent squint against the brightness and heat. Images flickered - things she didn't know, things she didn't understand, pregnant mares and hopeful bucks - it was all too much for her take in at once. The lightning continued its varied, rapid strikes, but began to move away from her, taking the confusing images with it.
No. These are my choices to make!
Ascent reared where she stood and began to gallop after the storm. She knew she couldn't chase lightning, but she was as fast as the cheetah that her kind trained, her eyes feeling as bright as the shards of sky that struck the land. She chased her future, her life, unafraid to barrel headlong into the unknown.
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