Wapun Meadow But the day this page is stained

The storm came out of nowhere.

Ephraim's trips into the lands surrounding his family's temporary stopping place grew more frequent as the days went by, and now he felt a confident mastery of the meadow's geography. His steps no longer faltered with uncertainty and he no longer felt a need to mask his family's location behind vague replies for strangers. He could locate them within seconds and had a handful of landmarks in Wapun by which he conducted his exploration. When he headed out on a cloudy but warm afternoon, he wasn't expecting to be caught in the crosshairs of a fast-moving and severe thunderstorm cell.

He turned about, intent on returning to his family, when the sky grew dark. There was something ominous about how the wind died and muggy stillness took its place, but Ephraim tried to ignore it as he hurried back in the direction of "home". He wasn't quick enough, though; rain came on sudden and fast, blotting the world out in a hazy sheet, and right on its heels, hail. He might have been able to get back even through that, but a blinding flash of light was followed up almost instantly by a CLANG that rattled his very bones, and Ephraim's wits left him.

Reason was replaced with animal instinct as he wheeled sharply and his shaky legs took off under him. His pupils were fully dilated by the time the second clap of thunder boomed over the meadow, scaring him out of his skin and turning his run into a panicked flight. The pup threw back his ears in a futile effort to quiet his ringing eardrums, but nothing could quell his fear then. His tail hugged his groin tightly as he fled across the meadows, mindlessly focused on only one thing: the sun in the distant northwest, the safe haven from the hell he found himself in as he ran, on and on, leaving everything he knew far behind him.