Alina

Atop a big, red rock only a few yards from the shoreline the white little dove was perched. Her wings were halfway extended and she stood very still, so very still in fact that she almost looked like a marble statue on top of a rusty pillar. Had it not been for the silky hairs in her mane and tail wavering in the ocean breeze it would have been easy to think that she was not a real mare of flesh and blood. But another clear giveaway was her sparkling emerald eyes that scanned the blue ocean which lay before her with determination and slight fear.

The foaming waves threw themselves lazily against her pillar and sent droplets of salty water towards her pristine white frame. Above her the skies where as blue as could be and the rays of the sun embraced her body and gave her the strength she needed to complete the task she’d given herself.

A few days earlier the girl had arrived at her new home; Dragon’s Thoat, and she already loved it. But her wings were still restless, used to constantly being on the move, and she had decided to explore her surroundings. She had started in her immediate area and today she’d flown south - so far south that she met a big fear of hers; the ocean.

Arriving at the rocky shore she realized it was a perfect opportunity for her to try and push the boundaries of her comfort zone a bit. She strongly believed that without a little discomfort life would never be exciting and so she had glided out to the red rock with her heart beating hard in her chest. For a while she just stood there, watching the foam on the waves. But as soon as she felt comfortable she had begun spreading her wings slowly. When they were extended to such a point where she felt scared again she held her position. And there she was now, a slight smile on her pale, pink lips and her heart pounding against her ribs.

For a while she kept the same pose and then she decided that it was time to give her body a chock. So she leapt off the rock and before her wings could raise her towards the heavens she was dipped in the salty water all the way up to her belly. For the thin skinned dove the summer-warm ocean held a temperature far colder than she would say was comfortable and she was happy that her downy wings carried her out of the water just as fast as she’d gone in.

The dove rose over the waves. Her heart pounded in tune with her wing beats and sweat was beginning to color the skin around her ears gray. She couldn’t even hear the sounds of the ocean over her pulse rushing in her ears. She had trouble containing a steady flight because of the quirks of the air currents and those quirks were a big factor to her fear of large open waters. It was so hard to predict which way the winds would come or go and if she fell from the sky she imagined that there must be a thousand sea monsters under the waves just waiting to feast on her skinny body. Not much on there to eat, though. She thought with a shaky smile.

The sky before the girl was light blue without even a hint of a cloud, but had she looked back towards the shoreline she would have noticed that she was in far more trouble than she had originally thought. Behind her, black clouds had been forming for as long as she’d been standing on her rusty pillar. They bore rain, thunder and lightning and would momentarily be chasing away the blue skies above the little dove. But she was too new to these lands to know the signs of a storm approaching and too focused on her task to notice the electric air around her. So when the first rumbling thunder reached her small ears she’d flown quite far out over the ocean. She stopped mid-air, let her hind quarters fall a bit and then turned back towards the sound. The black clouds had crept out over the water which was now turning deep gray and as she watched in silent horror a flash of lightning zigzagged down and hit the rocky beach.


bg and flower: locolobo.net