It had been a while since she had seen rain.
It must’ve been months since she was far enough from her homeland to actually experience water falling from the sky, and it always felt so strange to her.
Tianhuo, as a creature with wings made of flame, was rendered grounded by the precipitation, and while most of her race would find it frightening, she stood her ground and let the water pass over her scales as other races did. Or, at least should have.
Being the Champion of Houshan, Tianhuo had been sent to enough nations to know that most races ran for cover from the rain, or carried something with them to protect themselves from it, despite the mere water not having an effect on them. She knew her own race could sometimes get sick from the cold that rain imparted as well as the suppression of flames the water itself caused, and while she had heard of other creatures getting sick as well, it was circumstances far more dire than a typical afternoon rain-shower.
Regardless, the longma continued standing amidst the small torched clearing in a forest, watching one of the few creatures she knew of that actually embraced the rain, and who was ironically enough a fire-based creature like herself.
Autumn Blaze, from a race of Kirins that lived relatively close to Houshan, had immediately faded in her literally infernal rage when she noticed the rain a few minutes prior, and started prancing around and dancing amongst the small puddles and damp, yet crunchy grass without a care in the world.
While Tianhuo was hardly on official business near the Kirins’ home, and thus was at liberty to ‘goof off’--as Autumn lovingly put it--as much as she liked, she preferred remaining calm and simply taking in the world around her.
The air was relatively brisk and wet as Tianhuo breathed it in, feeling an odd sort of fresh in comparison to her home’s hot and dry air, and the sensation of her flames getting instantly extinguished by something as mundane (to the world, at least) as rain felt humbling, as if it was to prove she was a creature like all others and her flames were merely a tool or aesthetic, rather than something that put her race above all others.
Of course, the sight was something to behold as well; with many shimmering drops all falling everywhere and splashing off of all of the trees, stumps, rocks, and grass filling the space with a calm aesthetic, which the light fog that the rain rolled it gave a pleasant background to. There was no rainbow to be seen amongst the sky, which would’ve certainly somewhat put-out Autumn if she had noticed, but it seemed the rain itself was easily enough to placate her.
The soft splattering of water across the landscape was soothing to Tianhuo’s hearing, with the constant white noise of nature itself calming her soul, and any brushes of wind that came out of the fog adding a bit more texture that she could relax into.
Tianhuo could hardly stop herself from asking why others avoided this feeling, this sight, and this sound like it was some sort of disease, and while she’d hardly say it to their faces unless they were being particularly rude, she really wasn’t sure if those creatures actually cared for nature in the slightest.
Did all of those creatures simply find their place amidst the systems that ruled them and let their souls be whittled away, never going out to see the beauty of the world and truly embrace it?