The sudden rain folded across the vast lands, descending in a steady, rhythmic whisper, drawing over the world a shroud of subdued, solemn gray.

On a young tree, a squirrel scurried hurriedly into a hole in the trunk, shook the moisture from its wet fur, then sat and stared curiously at the downpour, wondering when will it be able to resume its foraging. Nearby, a female deer nudged her young gently, ushering them into the relative warmth of her den, to wait out the storm. In a humble town on the edge of the forest, children ran across the wet pavement for home, crying in dismay at having their playtime interrupted.

But upon a clearing in the middle of the forest, a lone figure emerged from the shelter of the surrounding foliage, in slow, deliberate steps.

One step. The rain fell all around her. Before her. Behind her. On her left. Her right. An unbroken field of falling water. It swirled around her, the soft murmurs of the colliding waters were continuous, unceasing, fluid. All around.

Another step. Thunder sounded in the distance, its deep rumble slipping beneath the raindrop's whispered chorus, lifting it, giving it a new sound, a new depth. Completing the music.

A few more steps. Slow. Deliberate.

She stopped!

The falling droplets fell upon her shoulders, her arms, her hair; shattering on collision. Its pieces coagulated into a network of tiny streams, running along the creases of her clothes and the lines of her body, to eventually drip off onto the floor.

Like water, the magic moves. Like magic, the water flows.

It had always been there, an unspoken, integral part of her. Something that can only be described as a little rippling sphere, of shimmering, shivering light, in the most profound depths of her being. With every step she took, the sphere grew erratic. It was trembling. In anticipation.

And now, at the very center of the clearing, it exploded with an excruciating brilliance. It writhed, struggled, and crackled. Refusing to be contained. Screaming to be unleashed.

And so she lifted her hand skyward, in one, swift, graceful arc, her arm rippling outwards fluidly. As water. As magic.

And the magic poured forth like water from a shattered dam. It burst from the confining depths of her soul, outwards into the surrounding rain. Magic met water, and water met magic. The two became one, swirling and flowing around her, filling the space around her with a living display of graceful movements, and a shimmering glow of latent energy. An uneasy quiet descends, like the eve of a storm.

With one forceful stroke she brought her hand to the ground, and the falling water all around her came abruptly to life. The clear, spherical drops zipped about her, racing, arcing, spinning, in a thousand different paths and directions. The clear water that had been pooling at her feet rose angrily in a resounding roar of splashes, then tumbled outwards as their initial momentum faded away; blooming like an intricate, otherworldly flower of clear, semi-transparent petals. And at its center she stood, her eyes closed, her arms moving in rhythmic, graceful arcs in a trance-like dance as she, too, sought to be one with the magic. One with the waters. One with the rain.

Lightning flashed! Striking the vast lands with a sudden flux of incredible brilliance! The light crashed upon the rippling, whipping mass of water and magic she created, gleaming off the multitude of cascading droplets. She flung her body around, and her arms followed, swinging a great circular sweep across the relentless rain. And the magic followed, drawing the waters with it. A clear ring of rippling liquid arced around her spinning body, with droplets endlessly cascading, rising and falling in unison. She seized hold of the waters, bending and twisting it, breaking and making it, shaping and moving it. Thunder roared in her ears. She was exultant. The waters were hers as was the magic. And the magic gushed from the deepest parts of her soul in an inexorable torrent of emotions, melding with the waters that poured over her upturned face, bringing shape and form to the storm that raged within her.

Then, the moment passed. The magic unraveled, dissipated, as its wielder's hand fell in fatigue. The towering ecstasy died down, and the whipping waters descended once again to the ground. Everything was falling. The rain, no longer enthralled by the powerful energies, came cascading downwards in unison. The waters that hammered upon her back flowed downwards, slipping along her arms, pass her forearms onto her wrist, then flowed in a tiny stream across her palms and down her fingers, before finally falling in glistening spheres to the ground. Even the sounds of water descended in volume, and she stood alone, hunched in the rain, amidst the sudden quiet.

She cupped her palms, allowing the rainwater to pool on them, then splashed it over her face. And she stood thus, hands over her eyes, in the unceasing rain, for a seemingly interminable length of time. The rain washed over her soothingly, washing the heat of exertion and frustration from her body, washing the flush of effort and emotion from her cheeks. Blending with the liquid that emerged from her eyes, diffusing it, veiling its existence.

At long last she straightened. She pushed her long, dripping hair back, revealing a face slightly pale from the exertion, and a pair of eyes which, though shadowed from fatigue, bore a new light, faint but unmistakable.

In slow, deliberate steps, she made for the shelter of the distant trees.