A brief one-shot featuring my character Right Brosca, written for a prompt on the Dragon Age Writer's Corner forum here on fanfiction:
{Rain, from the POV of someone whose never experienced rain before.
~Amell/Aeducan/Brosca/Surana~}
Right was recovered enough from the injuries he'd occurred in escaping the Carta hideout that Duncan had finally unstrapped his ribs, and the pair of them were putting in a full day's hard travel now instead of having to stop early for Right to rest. Unfortunately, making good time meant they'd left the forested mountains behind, and were now skirting the eastern shores of Lake Calenhad, the gently rolling grassland of the Bannorn to their left.
Right kept his eyes firmly on the ground at his feet as they walked; it had been bad enough coming out of Orzammar and seeing that great blue sky rising above the mountains. Now the comforting wall of the mountains was gone, and rock of any sort was increasingly rare. There weren't even any trees any more – or at least not more then the occasional one or two or small copse of them – to hide the unimaginably far-distant horizon from him if he chanced to raise his eyes. The empty blue sky cupped over him like a gigantic bowl trapping a tiny flea on a vast tabletop. He'd always heard the surface was a big place, but... he'd never imagined something this immense. Even knowing that somewhere under his feet were undoubtedly more of the deep roads, that the dwarven realms stretched under all this land, did not make him feel any better. The largest space he'd ever been in down under was a drop in the bucket compared to this terrible emptiness.
"Looks like a storm is coming in," Duncan remarked.
"A storm?" Right asked, keeping his eyes glued to the ground.
"Yes – look, over there – you can see the storm approaching from miles away, out here on the plains."
Duncan said it so casually that Right raised his eyes and followed Duncan's pointing arm before he could stop himself. He froze a moment, staring in awe at the distant wall of huge grey clouds, towering into the air like the peaks of mountains. "By the Stone! What are those!"he exclaimed. "I thought clouds were just little fluffy white things..."
Duncan smiled. "That, my friend, is a thunderstorm approaching. We'd better find a sheltered spot to camp soon; there'll be heavy winds and rain once those reach us."
"Rain?" Right asked nervously. Duncan had explained that to him – water falling from the clouds – but he just couldn't imagine it. Water dripping off stone, yes, water flowing from pipes, yes, bubbling springs and long falls of water down into the depths, also yes. He could even accept previously unimaginable volumes of water just sitting around on the ground, like that vast sparkling flatness off to their right, but... rain? Just falling out of the sky, from nowhere to the ground? It was just too nonsensical an idea to picture.
They continued walking. Right kept glancing uneasily at the approaching clouds. The wind began to pick up, raising a hissing sound from the grasslands as the grasses fluttered and tossed in waves of motion. That was awesome, in a way, a sight that he thought would never cease to amaze him, how the very movement of the air could be seen in the motion of the plants it swept over. That you could see a wave of motion pouring through the grass towards you, until you felt the gust of the wind against your own skin, felt it tugging at your own hair and clothes as it tugged at the grasses.
A small copse of trees came into view ahead. "We'll camp there," Duncan announced. "The trees will help to break the wind."
Right nodded, then jumped at a faint rumbling sound. "What's that sound?" he exclaimed nervously, looking off toward the looming thunderheads.
"Thunder. It's that noise that gives thunderstorms their name. It will be much louder once the storm is closer, and at its worst when the storm is overhead."
"What... makes that noise," Right asked, trying to imagine how loud a sound would have to be to travel as far a distance as it was from those still-distant clouds to where he and Duncan were.
"Lightning," Duncan said.
"Lightning?"
Duncan stopped, and turned to face east. "Watch the clouds for a moment. Especially the gap between layers."
They stood still a moment, side by side, watching the distant clouds. Right gasped at the sight of a bright thread of light spearing between layers of the clouds, harshly illuminating the nearby billows for a moment. "Ancestors!"
"That's lightning," Duncan explained, and resumed walking. "Some mages can control the power that makes that, but never on so large a scale. We'll hear the thunder from it in a bit. The storm is so far away it takes time for the sound to reach us."
Right kept his eyes on the roadway at their feet as they hurried along, and sure enough, a short time later there was another of those odd deep rumbling sounds, like a distant rock burst.
They reached the copse, and Duncan picked out a camp site for them, on a small rise of land among the trees, hopefully high enough to stay well-drained during the storm, he said. They quickly erected their small tent, and Duncan started a small fire, saying they'd need to eat before the storm arrived if they wanted a hot meal.
While he prepared their food, Right picked his way through the trees to the eastern edge of the little patch of forest, and watched the clouds approaching. They were close now, looming up into the sky like mountains, like a mass of rock about to avalanche down over their heads, like nothing he'd ever imagined or seen before. The lightning was giant spears now, flashing down to stab the land beneath the encroaching clouds. The gap between flash and rumble was much shorter, the sound much louder. The gap between the bottom of the cloud and the horizon was beginning to look oddly fuzzy, as is the clouds were stretching to the ground, and dim, as if it was twilight out there, though the copse itself was still brightly lit by the westering sun.
Lost in his wonder at the sight, he didn't even hear Duncan's approach, and jumped in surprise when the man spoke from right behind him.
"Best come back to the camp and eat, that rain will be here soon."
The two hurried back to the camp sight, hurriedly gulping down pan bread rounds folded around bits of cold meat and cheese, and cups of hot tea. The light faded suddenly. The wind roared in the trees overhead, loose leaves and bits of branch blowing between their trunks, as Duncan hastily kicked dirt over the fire, smothering the flames.
"Into the tent," Duncan ordered. They'd barely made it under the shelter of the canvas before the rain was on them, a hissing sound as it cascaded down through the fluttering leaves overhead the final too-brief warning of its approach, followed in short order by a brilliant flash of light that made Right jump, and a roar of thunder that left his ears ringing.
He crouched by the flaps of the tent, holding a small gap open, and peering out, fascinated by the storm. Even here under the sheltering trees, it was pouring down heavily. He didn't know how long he crouched there; long enough for his legs to start aching from being in one position so long, for his fingers to grow cold from their exposure to the wind and rain.
Eventually the lightning drew further away, the rumbles of thunder more widespread and fainter, then both ceased. The rain still spilled out of the sky, at a considerably slower pace, and the light increased, to pale grey rather then dark grey.
He turned away, finally letting the gap fall closed. "Are all storms like that?" he asked eagerly.
Duncan smiled. "No, you were lucky – that was a rather spectacular storm. More usually the sky will just fill with an even layer of grey clouds, low overhead, and then rain will fall for a while before it finally clears. Thunderstorms like that are less common. You liked it, then?"
"It was... amazing. Beautiful."
Duncan grinned. "Not so beautiful if you happen to get caught out in it. I'm glad you liked it; I suspect weather is one of the hardest things for dwarfs to adjust to once they reach the surface."
Right nodded thoughtfully. He found himself wondering what some of the other "weather" Duncan had described to him as they walked would be like. Fog and blizzards and so forth.
He was looking forward to finding out for himself.