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There is a night that our guardian does not forget.
One that started with the smell of petrichor heavy in the air of the Savanah.
Our Guardian was but a cub then, small, mewling, depending still on the warmth of her mother’s fur.
But old enough to have tasted blood, meat, no longer a milk toothed infant.
Thorn, as her mother called her, could smell the rain, the scent heavy in her nostrils. A small twinge in her belly filled her with anxiety as the two of them continued to walk, her mother spoke of bringing her home, taking her to the king and having her train. Thorn did not care for this idea, but she did not protest, she simply scampered behind her mother as the clouds roared with the sound of the gods and their sky fire. “It will be a downpour.” Her mother proclaimed after seeing thorn flinch from the quick flash of sky fire that struck down in the middle of the first thunderous boom. A second cacophonous roar echoed from the heavens and thorn found herself frozen in fear as visions of the trials to come flooded her senses. The smell of energy and smoke, the sound of cracking wood and bone, the taste of blood, and the visions, of herself, atop a throne of rolling thunder clouds. Eyes alive with power and sky fire.
Her mother was quick to pick her up by her scruff and Thorn yowled in protest at the feeling, tail still tucked between her legs, the visions broke as the rain started to fall around them. She remembers the sound of her mother’s breath on her neck as she started to run, thorn still safetly in her maw.
The next sequence of events are less clear.
A bright flash of sky fire struck down ahead of them a loud cracking noise followed, like a groan. She heard the cracking wood, and a soft hush through the rain before a world shaking jolt sent her out of her mother’s mouth. Thorn felt as if she was flying as she heard her mother’s pained yowl behind her, right as she hit the ground a large branch closed over her, dropping from the sky.
“Thorn!? Thor-“
Her mother’s voice, urgent, stoped abruptly as another spear of sky fire struck down right in front of Thorn. She could smell fire and a sick singed scent hung heavy in the air as she cowered, trapped by the branch. She called out for her mother but no voice returned as the rain continued to pour…
Thorn threw herself under a gap in the branches imprisoning her, and narrowly escaped another piece of debris as it came crashing down on-top of where she had been just moments ago. She peered out into the darkening cluster of branches for her mother but not even a scent of her remained, the small hope that her mother was alive was overshadowed by the overwhelming realization, that she was alone now. The rain was to loud to hear her own yowling over as her paws pounded against the mud, but she still wailed as loudly as she could in the hopes her mother would come.
After an hour of running, panting, yowling, and crying, Thorn pulled her shivering body into the hollow of a large tree.
She was surprised to find there were a number of other cubs there as well, all alone, all sheltering from the storm. Most of them were older and bigger than her, but few words are exchanged when she climbed in still mewing in distress. They cleaned her and cuddled her close when her fur was semi-dry. That was the last night she ever saw her mother, the last night she even caught her scent.
Our Guardian stayed with those cubs, for a while, she found another family for a time, one where they played, and groomed, and tussled all day, where the mice were fat and slow, one where she felt better about the loss of the future she was promised and the only family she had known.
But nothing lasts forever and she had to move on.
After she moved from pride to pride as an adolescent, she ended up here with us, as our guardian, a gift from the storm you could say, from the melodies of the raging rain.
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