The Gardenkeeper's Daughters

Lotus- 10

It's raining in the morning. I can see the water move through the leaves, as if passed tenderly from one to the next. Luckily, little of it gets to me, though my pelt feels uncomfortably moist. I shake myself off vigorously as I stand, striding about the camp while the others mumble quietly upon awakening.

"Good morning!" I yell over the patter of the rain on leaves.

"Good morning to you too." Vivian yawns. "How are you?"

"I'm great!" I tell her. "Nothing like a little rain for flowers, right?" My petal wings flare as if to comment on the statement, which seems to amuse Vivian. She looks down with disappointment. "If only that were the case for all of us."

"Something wrong?" I ask.

"Rain." she says. "I've always hated rain."

"Well, with your fiery portal thing, I guess it makes sense. Maybe you've just become one with the flames."

"That's very poetic, though I doubt it's the case." she snorts. "I just don't like being cold and wet."

"You should become one with the rain," I tell her.

"Now you're just being ridiculous."
"Nope! Natrina and I had to meditate all the time with our mother. It's more useful than you think it is, I promise."

She snorts, unconvinced. "Well then. How do I... 'become one with the rain'?"
I sit down on the wet grass and close my eyes. I hear her thump down into the grass and open my eyes to find hers closed. "That's good. Now imagine your heartbeat slowing down. As you do that, imagine that the rest of your body is also slowly coming to a halt, everything becoming quiet and slow." I say, trying to force my voice as calm and low as it will go.

She nods, and the rest of her body grows very still.

"Now, see with everything but your eyes. Let your senses reach out into the earth and let your soul mingle with the magic residing in the planet."

She gives no indication that she heard me, but I can feel her breathing. I sit down next to her and the two of us sit in silence for what seems like hours. There's a harmony that comes with meditating in a group. I remember it fondly from other days with Natrina, and I find myself suddenly homesick. I can tell Vivian feels the negativity too, because I feel warm fur pressing against me in the rain and though I know she must not be meditating deeply as I am, I press back into her because she's warm and comforting.

"What are you two doing?" says Aislyn, tilting her head as I open my eyes.

"We were meditating." Vivian says, bile in her voice, "Until you showed up."

"Sorry!" Aislyn says. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"It's fine. We should get on the road anyways." Vivian gets up and shakes the water off her fur. "The rain is coming down faster now. We want to find somewhere to shelter if it gets too bad."

"Alright. I'll tell Natrina. Natrina?" She bounds off in the opposite direction and returns with my sister, who has a stick in her mouth.

"Is that some type of secret medicine stick?" asks Vivian in an attempt to be nice.

"No, I was drawing something in the dirt. I'm trying to understand what Aislyn's been telling me about my dreams. Something about... a combined mental scape due to cosmic interference?" Natrina says as we begin walking, though she's looking upwards at the rain instead of down at us. Her steps are far apart, as if she's barely stepping at all and instead merely prancing across the clouds.

"That's right!" Aislyn says, bounding along to keep up.
"I understood about half of that." I say quietly.

"We can explain, sometime." Aislyn suggests.