After the Rain
Tresh yawned and swished her tails back and forth, back and forth, idly watching a serene landscape of softly flowing water in a gentle stream, her eyes watching the darting dance of fish.
She smiled, reaching out her hands, cupping the clear shining water, dashing her shining image into tiny pieces as the water danced around her fingertips. The little koi fish swam in and around her cupped hands, sliding gracefully across her fingers. She tickled them gently, her small fingers stroking their gleaming scales, making the fish wriggle and seem to laugh as she petted them.
She sat down then, and dangled her feet in the water, feeling the cool cold water lap against her ankles. She smiled up at the sun, the warm rays gleaming on her silver hide, her hair a hot radiant mass twining around her shoulders and down her back, between her wings.
She spread her wings to catch the sunlight, the membranes glowing a rich honey-amber color that lit the water around her with a golden glow. She smiled down at her toes, the wind lifting her mane and making it dance around her silver form, hugging her body with the silken strands. She sat there for awhile, watching the water. A rainbow was rising from the steaming mists of the farthest reaches of the stream, a little remnant of a passed storm.
Tresh always liked to sit out after the storms. When the birds would start their solemn little sounds, the twilight would gather around her like a silken blanket, and the fish would wander from beneath their rocks. When the world would seem to her to be washed clean, everything bright and shining, but quiet and somber.
She stood quietly then, smiling gently down at the little fish that seemed to wag their tails as her toes left them to their own adventures, and slowly she began welding her way back up the path she had come down.
Through the trees that whistled softly, rustling with the weight of the rain in their leaves, across the tiny puddles that reflected the blue sky, through the meadows where the blades of grass were bent beneath the tiny dewdrops...everywhere, the world gleamed and light was reflected, a prism of beauty and wonder that Tresh reveled in.
As she walked, the drops of rain collecting on her legs, dripping between the tiny scales of her body, she slid from her amethyst gown like a lizard shedding its skin, leaving the cast off garment in a violet puddle among the blue ones. She continued on, bare and damp, the rain falling in tiny pearls from the branches above her head, sliding across her body and collecting, covering her in a fine sheet of misty prisms.
She smiled, staring down at her hands, looking at the tiny drops that had collected between the fine scales of her fingers, staring at the minute pearls that hung from her claws. She grinned widely, then lifted her arms to the skies, to the deep azure blue of the storm and the deep silver of the clouds. She whistled, a soft shrill little sound, and then closed her eyes and spread her wings.
Slowly, she started to expand them, letting them bloom from her shoulders, out and out, spreading behind her in a silky amber wave. When she felt them expand to their full, weight-bearing capacity, she waved them once, the full heavy weight of them making a sound like wet velvet as they cupped the heavy moisture-laden air, and she flung herself up with a leap, her leg muscles thrusting, her arms reaching out, out towards the sky. Once, twice, her wings beat downward, and her feet left the ground, her wings carrying her skyward.
Once airborn, she soared into the skies, letting the passing storm winds carry her higher on wings of rainbow and amber, her body moving between clouds and above the trees, dancing through the skies.
She smiled downward as she spread her arms once more, the moisture remaining in the air gathering once more on her naked body. She spread her fingers, flinging her hands through the winds, casting droplets around her as she tumbled and soared. As the drops left her fingertips, they became tiny pearls and tiny gems, each one the size of a raindrop, falling from her dragon body to softly rain on the ground below.
Each little gem, so tiny and glittering in the dusky light, fell unerringly towards the hands of small children, the gems spreading across the rainsoaked world, sliding through rainbows, silently streaking like tiny stars in the dawning night.
Tresh flew for several hours, until the sky was the rich velvety violet of true-night, then let herself begin to fall, her wings folding back against her shoulders, letting her make one last pass across the land, scattering the tiny jewels once last time, this time letting them fall where they would, scattering on the wind and blowing into tiny shining piles in the crevices of stone and wood.
She smiled when she landed, her gleaming scales drying swiftly as she padded home, her wings small once more, a soft laugh rumbling from deep in her chest as she thought about what had come. This was what came of being a celestial-dragoness...a dragoness of the stars. The ability to create beauty and joy and laughter wherever she chose, and the ability to make the small into something significant.
This was why she truly treasured storms...they gave her a chance to see the world anew, and share with the world something special.