BOOM!
I’d heard there were ponies who loved thunderstorms. They have little clouds or lightning bolts on their flanks and they go chasing the things without a care for their own safety because they just want to see the light shows.
Those ponies were mental.
The next month there was a tropical storm of a size I’d never laid eyes or ears on. The rain blew in from the open window and soaked every wall and crack in the wood, not to mention myself as I lay on the floor, practically bolted there. The only thing shaking more than me was my tree every time the clouds yelled at everything below them like we were its noisy neighbours.
But there were a few times that I peered over the windowsill. I couldn’t help it. She was due.
She arrived just a hair before a thunderbolt flew through the sky and exploded the clouds above her. It was almost as if she brought the daylight herself with her for just a split second, but the storm didn’t take kindly to it and let her know she had no right. She was standing about where she was when the water made her trip that one time (that one glorious time) and she nearly fell again from the wind and the rain absolutely walloping her.
I probably would have found it funny if I wasn’t busy wondering if my tree was about to be Mother Nature’s kindling. I saw Sunny warp in ’cause I knew when it usually happened, but that crash sent me flying into the wall across the room. I shook, huddled my sick little body together, and breathed like a maniac, eyes pressed shut.
Home was where you belonged. Home was supposed to be safe and warm. Even a temporary one! What was the point of home if you didn’t feel safe there? Might as well buzz off.
But I couldn’t buzz off while I was caught in that thing. My mum taught me better than that. When winds get rough, there’s no leaving home, otherwise I’d get lost.
Unless there was another way out.
There was a shuffling of leaves down below me. It crept up towards the bottom of my rickety tree house. The tree shifted a touch, and strangely enough, it wasn’t the wind doing it. I was almost brave enough to peer out the window again to see what was going on, but I didn’t want to give the storm another chance to scare the rest of my skin bare.
The shuffles got closer.
It was her!
Was she coming to get me? Maybe she knew I was there all along and didn’t want me to suffer through this like the stranded, sickly creature that I was. Maybe she’d fly me back to my friends! Or even better, she could fly me to her home! In an attempt to feel a little better, I pictured what her castle looked like. A castle where a mare like her lived. It would be sunny and warm and there wouldn’t be a single grain of sand for miles and miles there.
Hey, it was possible.
But then I wondered if the storm was tricking me into coming out of my home. Maybe if I poked my body outside the window the storm would be there, ready to strike me down and laugh as I fell into the sand and croaked. Maybe she was in cahoots with it.
It was just as possible.
The boards behind me creaked and pushed gently against my back. A soothing voice exhaled from behind the wall. I bit my tongue and stifled a shriek.
“I can’t remember the last time I’ve been caught in a storm…”
Was she talking to me?
“I suppose there’s a lot… that I wouldn’t remember.”
She spoke real shakily. Honest, her voice sounded unsure of itself for the first time ever. She tried to start her breathing exercises again, but she couldn’t keep the speed down, and every rumble in the sky choked her breath out for a few moments entirely. She was just as terrified as me.
Useless old girl. She was supposed to save me! Not be relatable.
I thought of what my mum told me again. How she’s not so unlike me. I figured, if I were her, I wouldn’t be hanging around here. If I could blip in and out of places as easy as she could, then I sure wouldn’t be bullied by the freaking weather. Wouldn’t she go back to her castle if she had the ability? Her warm, clean, not-at-all-near-a-beach castle. A place where there just had to be room for one more?
“Maybe next time…”
A few golden wisps of magic started to appear in front of me and travel through the wood, and I panicked. The boards gradually went back to where they were, then went too far and bulged out the other way. A hum started from nothing and built in strength from outside. It grew higher and higher until it was buzzing so loud that I could barely hear the storm outside, which somehow just made it more terrifying.
I scuttled away from the wall. I coughed and choked out an attempt at something that sounded like ‘don’t leave me here,’ but I didn’t stop crawling back. I wasn’t about to be part of her crater.
A flash of light lit everything and then nothing, and the humming stopped. I turned to the window and gulped.
BANG!
“Ah!”
A single board in the wall cracked, but her spell didn’t care. It exploded just like it did on her first arrival and ripped into my home, taking several pieces of wood out of my wall. My ears popped, and I made a noise that I didn’t hear. I assumed it was all heroic and determined, though, and not at all sad and pathetic.
I opened one eye and looked at the damage on the other side of the room. All I could see were leaves—shiny, dark green, and not at all what I liked to see when I looked at my wall. I huddled below the windowsill and let the rain hit me.
And I hoped she was nice and warm in her stupid, dopey castle.