Thunderstorm Story #4 · 7:56pm May 6th
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Thunderstorm Story is back. I am not yet ready to write daily again after my friend went into distance from me, but I don't want to give up Thunderstorm Story. And I know my friend does not want that I give it up, either. So I will still continue this writing experiment like I intended last year.
The first thunderstorm of 2024 has happened today. And the first thunderstorm of the second thunderstorm season since I began writing Thunderstorm Story and started this writing experiment. This also marks the beginning of the first thunderstorm season that Thunderstorm Story will experience in full.
It's been 7 months, 2 weeks and 3 days since the last thunderstorm. The first thunderstorm of the new season lasted for almost two hours. I missed the first thirteen minutes, but the duration of it let me write a long part. It's the second-longest part since I started, it has 603 words. There was a lot of rain, too, and fast winds. I think it even were three thunderstorms that happened right after each other; the rumbling became quieter and when I was thinking if the thunderstorm is over now, it grew louder again. This happened two times. But I still count it as one thunderstorm, because the timespan between each one was only a few minutes.
It was a thunderstorm worthy of the first one of the new season and it let me write a part of Thunderstorm Story that is worthy of the first part of this year's thunderstorm season.
It's been a long time since the last part and you probably need a refresher before you keep reading. I link the first three parts of Thunderstorm Story for you:
I hope you'll enjoy the new part.
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She had come from a farm, so she spoke, one of the wretched, little steads in the countryside that surrounded the sturdy, megalithic city walls that barely manage to sell their meager amount of crops. It was reflected in her stature – when had she eaten the last time? Did she come into the city to beg for food, a last, fleeting attempt to nourish herself before she would perish in the winds and the rain? Like she was reading my mind – and perhaps she was – her answer confirmed my thoughts. They were not a rare sight, fillies like her, but they usually died on their farms quietly during the night, their parents or owners finding them with broken eyes at sunrise. She had escaped this fate..... but for what? I could not keep her here, my lord would not allow it and he valued his riches more than the lives of the poor and little. At dawn she would have to leave, it came over me in a realization that was as dark as this night was. But the night was not yet over.....
Her farm was dead, she continued her tale of woe. The livestock had died first, after days of desperate mooing, grunting and clucking from behind the closed doors of barns and sheds. A storm, not unlike the one that my city was being struck with this night, had destroyed all crops, above the ground and underneath it. And this storm grew worse, trees with apples and chestnuts growing were flung by the winds like toothpicks and had gotten their trunks snapped before they crashed down onto the ruined soil. A storm of such power..... would the same happen to my city, I asked myself in shivers.
Food was scarce. Prior to harvest, the storm had struck and they neither had anything to sell nor to eat. The other farms were not interested in buying old cattle, for they had their own struggles. My little fugitive, shivering herself when the words left her lips, told me the gruesome truth: Meat was all they could devour to stay alive, after their provisions had run dry and their livestock succumbed to famine. It was then that I realized what the smears that stained her torn clothes were, dried blood from chopped livestock corpses. The last ones, she had chopped herself, to cook a meal unbecoming of ponies. I retched at the words alone, scolding my brain for the pictures it showed me.
Tears streaming from her eyes, she told me that her brother had been the first to die, a picaninny colt with a coat as grey as her own and wings that used to flutter wild and untamed. Her sobbing and the strong shivers that erupted her tiny chest did not allow her to sit upright any longer, so I let her rest in my lap, her grief-stricken face resting on my legs from where she stared into my bedroom with tear-blurred eyes. Quite skilled her brother had been, with hammer and with chisel, I was informed. But never was there a chance to use this god-given talent of his, it was farmwork they needed to do, all day long, so they would have a chance to live and see the next day. Holding the little misery below me, I shed a few tears myself, wondering and asking myself why the world does things like this to the weakest of us.
I see that you are stricken by grief yourself now, my friend, but hold your tears, for the worst part of my tale is yet to come.
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Thunderstorm Story has 1,804 words now and it's still the first chapter. It probably won't be too long now until the next thunderstorm happens. I'll see you there.
Stay easy as a filly!
~ Fluttercheer
