It soon became clear that the oncoming dark clouds had no intention of going away and that we both would have to deal with each other. Fine. If it came down to a brawl between me and a cloud, I was quite sure I could win. Bears, clouds, I’d take on all of them.
The warmth of the sun on my feathers disappeared, replaced by the cool chill of the wind. The sky was fully grey now. I clicked my tongue in mild irritation. It wasn’t just overcast. The low rumble of thunder in the distance told me otherwise. The moody sky was dead set on breaking open and unleashing a torrent of rain. It just hadn’t decided when.
I shook my head as a single raindrop landed in my eyes. It was followed by others and soon the rain was pelting my back. I was no water bird. Unlike them, the water didn’t just roll off my feathers. The oil in them provided a little bit of extra time to get somewhere safe and dry, but it wasn’t enough to keep me flying during the storm.
But that wasn’t going to stop me. I wasn’t stopping for anyone. Not a person and definitely not the weather.
The rain drenched my body, making each wing beat difficult. The extra weight of being waterlogged dragged me towards the earth so I had to exert extra effort to keep aloft. I refused to stop. It was just a little rain. I’d flown through worse and survived. This was nothing.
Jagged white lightning cut the sky, followed immediately by a loud boom of thunder. My heart raced, exhilarated. It was a beautiful, destructive force of nature. The thought of danger was nowhere near my mind. I was simply in awe of the spectacle happening right in front of my eyes.
The sky roared with rain and thunder. I was completely alone. No other birds, shifters or otherwise, were around. I raised my head higher to stare at the dark belly of the cloud above me, like sticking my head into the mouth of some great beast.
A sharp gust of wind buffeted me. It was strong enough to blow me sideways. My wing overturned, sending me off balance. I let out an annoyed caw.
“Want to push me around, huh?” I called out. “Not gonna happen.”
The storm had other ideas. It fought back, blasting me with rain and strong gusts of wind that threatened to send me ass over talons, but I wasn’t going to let it win. I would come out of the storm the victor, no matter how soaked and sore it made me.
The rain and howling wind knocked me closer to the ground. I’d been soaring high, but now I barely scraped the canopy of the trees. That was one more added thrill of the danger. If my wings caught in the branches, it would be game over for me. A stranded, flightless bird was the worst thing I could be.
Yet still, my blood blazed and my mind raced with the urge to be victorious. I refused to land. Sudden flash storms like this wreaked havoc then were over and done quickly. I knew I could outlast it.
I winced as another billowing wind shoved me down and I skimmed the very top of the tree. I pulled up my feet into my body, keeping my form small and tight to avoid crashing. My heart raced wildly now. This was the thrill I’d been looking for, a dance with danger.
I saw it before I heard it. My vision went white. For a moment I was blinded, completely unaware of anything. And the sound exploded in my ears, so loud I felt it down in my bones.
Lightning struck the tree right in front of me, a sudden jagged brightness that whited out everything. But as soon as it happened, the brightness was gone. I realized that the hot, spiky sensation wasn’t the lightning. It was the pain shooting through me.
And then I was spiraling.
In the seconds that followed, I struggled to manoeuvre myself, but nothing I told my body was registering. The damn thing wouldn’t follow my orders. It flailed on instinct as I rocketed through the top branches, falling downwards at a diagonal angle. The trees thinned out as I shot past them, and the land turned to vast grassy plain. It was then that I experienced my first flash of true fear. If I hit the ground—
Something blurred in my vision. A spot of bright red against the greyness of the landscape and the blue-green of the overcast field.
It’s blood, I thought.My own blood. It’s over. My first taste of true freedom and it’s already over.
And then I crashed into the unbelievably soft, warm jaws of death.
At least, that’s what I thought.
The world slowly came into focus, colours and shapes that struggled to take hold. When I blearily opened my eyes, I knew I couldn’t be dead because holy shit, everything hurt so damn bad.
That’s when I saw his face for the first time. A gorgeous red fox, obviously a shifter from the intelligent glint in his eyes and the fact that his jaw was dropped in awe.
I was convinced he was going to eat me until I heard the sympathetic concern in his voice.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked, his eyes wide.
How does he know I’m a shifter?I thought. Then I tried to wiggle my wings and realized they’d turned into fingers. At least they were functional, non-broken fingers. I must’ve shifted from the shock of crash landing. It was a great wonder that I wasn’t dead.
As my swimming eyes slowly came into focus, I noticed the fox was still staring at me. Except he wasn’t a fox anymore. Even in his panicked state, he heeded the unspoken shifter politeness code of matching the form of the person you are speaking to. And I was glad he did, because wow, he was gorgeous. Bright red hair that matched the colour of his fox pelt cascaded messily around his shoulders and framed a face that was both ruggedly handsome and softly pretty at the same time.
Maybe it was the fact that I’d probably hit my head a dozen times on the way down, but I couldn’t grasp an immediate discernment of what his scent was. My first instinct was alpha, but I usually wasn’t so attracted to them. Just who was this handsome stranger?
“…alive?”
I was so busy mentally drooling over him that I failed to realize he was speaking to me.
