The Dog Who Caught Orange Lightning

Barnaby was a small scruffy terrier with floppy ears and a tail that never stopped wagging. He lived with a kind girl named Lily in a cozy blue house at the edge of town.

Every summer evening Barnaby would watch the sky turn brilliant shades of **orange** as the sun dipped behind the hills. But Barnaby loved summer storms most of all. He would press his nose against the window glass eyes wide with wonder as the sky lit up.

One afternoon a strange storm rolled in. The clouds swirled like purple cotton candy. Thunder rumbled like a giant's tummy. Then came the **lightning** — not ordinary lightning but bolts that crackled and shimmered with a bright orange glow unlike anything Barnaby had ever seen.

One orange bolt zipped and zagged across the sky then swooped down dancing through Barnaby's open window It tickled his nose and made his fur stand up in static electricity.

"Catch me if you can!" the lightning seemed to say.

Barnaby bounded outside his paws thumping happily in the warm grass. The orange lightning bounced off flowers turned somersaults over fence posts and spiraled up an old oak tree.

"Wait!" barked Barnaby though he wasn't a barking kind of **dog** usually. "Please be my friend!"

The orange lightning froze suspended in mid-air then slowly drifted down. It transformed into a tiny glowing dog just Barnaby's size made entirely of warm sparkling light.

"I've been lonely for a thousand years" whispered the lightning dog. "No one has ever tried to catch me before. Everyone runs away from storms."

Barnaby nuzzled his new friend gently. "I'm not afraid of storms. I think they're beautiful."

From that day on whenever storms gathered Barnaby would rush outside to play. The orange lightning taught him games that only storm dogs know — how to jump on raindrops how to surf on wind how to catch thunder in his paws and turn it into soft rumbles that lulled Lily to sleep.

The other dogs in the neighborhood thought Barnaby was strange. "Who plays in storms?" they grumbled. But Barnaby didn't care. He had learned something wonderful: sometimes the most magical friendships come from the things others are afraid of.

And every summer when orange sunsets painted the sky and storm clouds gathered you could see a small scruffy **dog** dancing in the rain with his glowing best friend lighting up the darkness with joy.