The moon looked down onto sea of shadows. Above, the clouds crept around the moon’s milky glow- as if afraid to tarnish it’s oppressive sphere. They lurked against the velveteen sky, rolling over the pin-prick stars and descending to the hills.

Down below, in the shadows which, try as the moon always did, couldn’t be penetrated by a mere night glow, the night came alive. The vicious circle of prey and predator started anew, and with the moon’s slow ellipse, the prey scurried through the undergrowth, their small minds focused on food and survival and the hunters circled overhead or silently tracked them. This was the way of the shadows. To live or die, there is no in-between. Survival being the main worry among these beings of the night, they lived to live, and as the predator descended from a high outstretched branch the prey knew its short life had came to the time when the circle of life would start afresh.

The howling gale swept through the forest like a supernatural force, the trees shrank back, away from it’s wild ways and violent outbursts. It plucked leaves from nearly bare branches and rattled through them, throwing some to the ground in a short eruption of its violent temper. The wind curled its death like grip round the saplings of the forest, wrenching them from their soil and tossing them aside like old bones.

The wind rumbled on, wailing out a bitter laugh as it wrecked havoc on each being that dared to stand before it. Pursuing the wind closely with an almighty clap of thunder and dazzle of lightning was the storm. The rain slashed at the trees with death strokes, and the constant shatter of rain hitting the ground was enough to send anything insane.

The small silver daggers of rain cut through everything they hit and the storm left a track cut across the country. The thunder echoing it’s departure with a single flash to capture the devastation forever. That is the likes of the storm, and watching it all from behind a darkened curtain is the moon. It neither cares nor wonders. It just knows, something we shall always envy and lust after.

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