I wake to the sound of the river, roaring in fury. It's raining again, the water coming down in heavy, angry torrents. There's a ripple of fainter lines in the air, angled sharply and crashing violently against the ground and the trees and into the river. I'm dreading going out there now.
I wonder if the rogues will still meet at the Sunstone in the rain. I've never needed to meet them before while it was storming.
I decide to brave it anyway. If I can kill cats with no worry, why should I care about a little rain?
As soon as I step outside I'm blinded. The water forces itself in my eyes and ears and mouth, but I drop my head so that it doesn't obscure my sense of smell. The rain covers up the scents worse than the snow does, but I can still pick out the faintest trace of dirty cat, and I follow it through the forest.
My paws slip on slick leaves and send me flying forward, my head crashing into a puddle of brown water that smells like earth. The water's all in my eyes and I can't see at all, and now my nose is clogged too. I don't know why I thought I could make it across the forest in a storm.
A streak of lightning lights up the sky. I can't see it clearly – my eyes are still flooded – but the muddle of colors lights up in a yellow-white blur, followed closely by a crack of thunder so loud I shriek and hit the ground. The rain pounds harder against my fur as I push myself up, shaking violently.
When I pass under the trees the rain lets up, just slightly, but enough that I notice it. I take a deep, shuddering breath, and hiss at the sky, letting out my anger at everything pour into the storm. I just want to avenge love's pieces, and this is what I get for it. All I want is help, to help in a way that satiates the burning need inside to feel again, to feel something, anything. All of my intentions are good, mostly, and still I am punished. Every day of my life I am chastised for a crime that wasn't really a crime.
I can't help but wonder what I did to deserve all the pain.
Hail's actions still get to me, sometimes. The agony is still there, only numbed and muffled. But I remember it so clearly, as if only yesterday he was tearing my heart out with his claws. I don't want to remember, but I always do. It finds its way through the heavy walls I've built around my self. It creeps through cracks I never realized were there and starts taking me down from the inside, piece by piece until I'm a wreck in the middle of the forest, writhing on the ground in anguish.
But then my claws slip through the delicate skin at the base of a stranger's neck, and I am me again.
There's another flash of lightning; another crack of thunder. I pick up my pace until I'm sprinting through the trees, my heart pounding against my chest. I can't breath, let alone scent where I'm going, so I fly blindly through the trees until suddenly I burst into the clearing.
Without the cover of the trees the rain comes down with no mercy, pelting me unceasingly. I can't smell any cats, and I don't see any dark forms against the blur of my vision.
I've traveled all this way in the middle of a thunderstorm, for nothing.
"Well this is great," I mutter, flopping down in the center of the clearing. Water splashed all around me as I squint, just barely making out the looming silhouette of the Sunstone. For a second I think I see something moving just in front of it, but I dismiss it as a trick of the rain.
But then I hear, "Shard? Is that you?" I snap my head up, trying to blink away the water in my eyes. The voice belongs to Vine, the more dominant of the rogues. If we were a group, he would be the leader.
"Yeah." My voice comes out grating and crackly. I push myself to my paws, splashing through the layers of water over to Vine's dark form. He motions me forward and pushes something aside – I hear it swish – and disappears beneath the Sunstone. I'm not sure where he's going, but I follow anyway.
Anything to get out of this rain. It reminds me too much of the day I met Hail.
A/N: Hey all! Now not only do I have the new (or, shall I say, old) 'fic Silence up, I also have another new (or old) 'fic up: Kamikaze. Go check it out!
And THIRTY reviews already?! Thank you guys so much! =D